Blog-notas de ideias soltas; post-it público de observações casuais; fragmentos em roda livre, fixados em âmbar. Eu, sem filtro. jorge.mourinha@gmail.com
Please note that delivery of some copies of The Economist this week has been affected by the flight disruptions caused by the volcanic ash cloud over large parts of Northern Europe and the UK.
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É uma das vozes que mais gosto actualmente de ler na internet - sobretudo porque se recusa à tirania do post constante ou do comentário sobre tudo e mais alguma coisa. Lane Wallace só escreve aí uma vez por semana e, quando escreve, escreve autênticos ensaios, com a estrutura e densidade de uma longa coluna de opinião. E fá-lo, sempre, com inteligência e precisão. A sua coluna online chama-se The Uncommon Navigator.
last five played: Shoukichi Kina, Belly, Elvis Costello, Us 3, Jurassic 5 now playing: Bulllet, "Prague Connection (vocal mix)" next five playing: Sérgio Godinho, U2, Kevin Rowland, Indochine, António Pinho Vargas
No espaço de dois parágrafos, num texto "menor", o rapaz dá cabo dos paradigmas de "gosto" e "elitismo", e consegue ser ao mesmo tempo sensato e provocador. Leiam e aprendam.
[...] listening to music recorded 20, 30 years ago is not living in the past, is not nostalgia. According to my dictionary, nostalgia is "homesickness... a longing for something far away or long ago or for former happy circumstances." The truth is that that the Sixties, not to mention the Fifties, sucked in the first place and you wouldn't like it if you were back there in a time when people did things like informing you you were mentally ill or worse if you didn't wanna take a toke on the doob. [...] No one in his right mind would want to return to either of those eras, which is why the lie in rosy confections like Grease and Beatlemania is despicable. But preferring Hank Williams or Charlie Parker or the Sun Sessions or the Velvet Underground to Squeeze and Rickie Lee Jones and the Go-Gos and the Psychedelic Furs is not nostalgia, it's good taste. Just like listening to Beck, Bogert & Appice or Clock DVA and the Fall are bad taste. So I'll take my bad taste and you're welcome to yours, and maybe someday something will actually happen again and then we'll both be happy.
[...] I asked my friend James Marshall if he thought the current dismal state of music was likely to improve. "No," he said. "It's got to get worse, because everybody's into their own thing and doesn't wanna know. Pretty soon every band will have no more than three fans, and nobody will even have any friends. Then after that you'll start resenting the other guy because he likes the same thing you like: it's your turf! How dare he encroach? So then people will start killing each other for appropriating each other's musical tastes and thus infringing on the neighbor's hipness space. How can you be smug about being the only person in the world cool enough to appreciate some piece of New Wave shit, or a blues band or arcane jazz artist for that matter, if you find out somebody else likes it? Don't dare tell 'em! Don't even tell your wife or girlfriend! Keep it safe inside your Walkman!"
A 18 de Setembro de 2007, Randy Pausch, professor de ciência informática na universidade Carnegie Mellon, deu uma palestra inserida na velha tradição académica da "última aula", sobre a importância de ter sonhos e de fazer tudo para os concretizar — e para concretizar os sonhos dos outros também. Esta palestra extraordinária correu mundo, tornou-se num fenómeno viral, levou Pausch ao programa de Oprah Winfrey, transformou-se num livro que vendeu milhões.
O que diferencia esta palestra de tantas outras? O facto de Pausch ter sido diagnosticado com um cancro pancreático e o de saber, quando deu esta palestra, que era realmente a "última aula" e que os seus dias estavam contados. E, contudo, ao longo dos 75 minutos da aula, é a vida que se celebra a cem por cento.
A lição é só uma: o único obstáculo aos nossos sonhos somos nós próprios.
Randy Pausch morreu ontem, 25 de Julho de 2008, aos 47 anos.
