quinta-feira, 30 de novembro de 2017

David Friedman


Definido como anarcocapitalista, David Friedman, acadêmico americano filho do lendário Milton Friedman, defende que nenhuma atividade precisa ficar nas mãos…
valor.com.br

Mudança

"Que ingenuidade pedir a quem tem poder para mudar o poder".
-Giordano Bruno (1590).

quarta-feira, 29 de novembro de 2017

Genetica

"For more than a century, the concept of the gene has dominated biological science in the global North. Built on thousands of years of plant cultivation and animal husbandry—the original experimental biology—which itself followed hundreds of thousands of years of observational biology by hunter-gatherers, the rise of genetics was simultaneously a window into the inner workings of living systems and a hostile takeover of all biological knowledge that preceded it.
"But despite its grip on the scientific culture of affluent societies, the gene’s reign as the supposed “secret of life” is coming to an end. The more we learn about natural systems—or, in many cases, relearn what was known traditionally—the clearer it becomes that genes are only one class of factors that causes development (changes that turn embryos into fully formed animals and plants) and evolution (transformation of simple organisms into more complex ones over the history of life). Alarmingly, however, even as the notion of the all-powerful gene loses scientific relevance, it is gaining new ideological traction in the appropriation and privatization of resources, helping to foster inequality among ethnicities and socio-economic classes. How this has occurred, and what can be done to stop it, is the subject of this article.
"In 1931, the Soviet historian of science Boris Hessen described how Isaac Newton’s laws of motion, seemingly universal landmarks in our understanding of the physical world, were produced partly in response to the technical needs of the emerging English industry of the seventeenth century. Correspondingly, the theory was infused with the ideology of its era, and its static worldview presented obstacles to further advances. Hessen showed how scientific analysis of nonmechanical matter (he focused on thermodynamics, but his arguments also pertain to chemistry and biology) was impeded by the Newtonian paradigm. Even the concept of conservation of energy, a straightforward mathematical consequence of Newton’s laws of motion, was not articulated until after Newton’s death. This was likely an effect of early Newtonian theory’s undialectical character: only point masses were considered, and both dissipation (the degradation of energy) and nonmechanical productive practices, such as metallurgy or steam power, were excluded.
"Ever since Hessen (and by extension, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, whose philosophy inspired his analysis) it has no longer been possible for honest observers of science to ignore its ideological dimension. Certainly this applies to the gene. When Gregor Mendel conducted his plant breeding experiments in nineteenth-century Moravia, he employed methods essentially the same as those used by farmers for millennia. By recording his results quantitatively, he discovered consistent associations of “factors” (what we now call “genes”) carried by the plants’ seeds with choices exerted later in development between alternative traits, such as long or short stems, inflated or constricted pods. Simple reflection indicates that those who first produced maize from teosinte-family grasses in Mexico about 9,000 years ago were not stumbling on things randomly, but doing much the same as Mendel: breeding by selection and hybridization while carefully keeping track of the results, probably using the Mesoamerican record-keeping systems that were famously employed in calendars, astronomy, and large engineering and civic projects.
"Early farmers thus implicitly recognized and adapted Mendel’s factors long before he or European civilization existed. What was at stake in traditional agriculture, however, were the properties of whole organisms (i.e., maize plants) in the context of their conditions of cultivation. Variations in external conditions such as temperature, humidity, or soil quality can elicit disparate phenotypes—structures and functions—as surely as genetic variation does. Furthermore, favorable forms were propagated socially, via families and communities, rather than commercially (as was increasingly the case in the North), and in multiple varieties, rather than as the monocultures compelled by industrial standardization. Among the peoples who brought these crops into being, preservation of “ecophenotypic” variety (that is, the range of phenotypes in their different ecological settings) was the paramount scientific value. They thus had little reason to attribute the vital nature of maize to hidden elements at its smallest and most quiescent stage of development."

Stuart A. Newman is a professor of cell biology and anatomy at New York Medical College and a founding member of the Council for Responsible Genetics. For…
monthlyreview.org

Convite


terça-feira, 28 de novembro de 2017

Opinião e fatos

“You are entitled to your own opinion,
but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

Ilusão

“We risk being the first people in history to have been
able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive,
so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them.”

— Daniel J. Boorstin, The Image: A Guide to
Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

Verdade

"If you have children or grandchildren, teach them to distinguish between true and untrue as fiercely as you do between right and wrong and between wise and foolish."

— Kurt Andersen

Economia e astrologia

"Considering that Astrology remained the main game in town, I feel somewhat skeptical that economics will be thrown out of court. We need predictions and take them where we can get them. We can't handle independent thought and the risk of standing to our opinion. Human mind and the social structure both suggest astrology and economics will be around for a long time. 

— Daniel Patrick Moynihan

segunda-feira, 27 de novembro de 2017

Guerra contra probreza

The War on Poverty has made Americans dependent and dysfunctional, not self-sufficient.
forbes.com

Carne artificial


Tasty Impossible Burger uses 95 percent less land, uses 74 percent less water, and emits 87 percent less greenhouse gas.
reason.com

Fidel Castro


Fidel Castro is dead, and the mainstream media in the US and elsewhere are beside themselves with grief over their fallen hero.
mises.org

Crimes do comunismo

There are about 200 million of victims of communism.
After spending four years on a campus saturated with Marxist memes and jokes about communist revolutions, my classmates will graduate with the impression that communism represents a light-hearted critique of the status quo, rather than an empirically violent philosophy that destroyed millions of liv...
thecrimson.com

sábado, 25 de novembro de 2017

Idade Média


Período entre os séculos 5 e 15 não é mais visto apenas uma era de trevas,…
alias.estadao.com.br

Fim dos Estados Unidos

Johan Galtung, fundador da disciplina de Estudos da Paz nos curriculos académicos e que já mediou mais de uma centena de conflitos, diz que já só três países estão dispostos a fazer o trabalho por Washington: Reino Unido, Dinamarca e Noruega.
publico.pt

Holodomor

Comemora-se hoje aquele que seria de elementar justiça reconhecer como o primeiro Holocausto do século XX. Refiro-me ao sucedido nos anos de 1932/33 em que foram mortos à fome 6 milhões de camponeses, a esmagadora maioria de nacionalidade ucraniana - o genocídio em massa ficaria conhecido pelo termo Holodomor, que significa morte pela fome na língua ucraniana.
O que aconteceu foi o resultado premeditado pela decisão tomada pelos genocidas comunistas: a implantação de uma econ...omia de guerra e, consequentemente, o desenvolvimento intensivo da indústria pesada. Para que tal fosse possível, havia que desviar os recursos do consumo, mesmo o alimentar. Daí a colectivização forçada da agricultura e a consequente queda catastrófica na produção agrícola, particularmente a cerealífera. No processo, haveria por fim a oportunidade de eliminar fisicamente os antigos kulaks. Entretanto, a escassez de divisas para comprar equipamento e know-how no exterior, levou à decisão de exportar milhões de toneladas de cereais quando a fome já grassava. O resultado só poderia ter sido o que foi.
Jovens! Estudai um pouco de História e ensinem-na aos vossos amigos que caírem no canto desta sereia que mais não é que uma Medusa.
.
Ver mais
Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation
Educação

Douglass North


EVENT HOSTSLee AlstonDirector, Ostrom Workshop at Indiana University-BloomingtonOstrom Chair & Professor of Economics and Law, Indiana University BloomingtonResearch Associate, NBERJohn NyeFrederic Bastiat Chair in Political…
mercatus.org

Memória do Holodomor

EXPOSIÇÃO E PALESTRAS SOBRE HOLODOMOR
(Texto de Fernanda Barth)
...
E é com esta intenção que trazemos para Porto Alegre esta exposição, no ano do centenário da Revolução Russa, para que o mundo nunca esqueça este crime brutal cometido contra o povo da Ucrânia e que permaneceu em segredo até o final da década de 80, tornando-se público apenas com o fim da URSS.
Entre 1932-1933 o regime de Stalin submeteu milhões de ucranianos a morte por fome, em um dos maiores genocídios cometidos por um regime totalitário no mundo.
O termo Holodomor deriva da expressão ucraniana 'Морити голодом' (moryty gholodom), tendo como raiz etimológica as palavras holod (fome) e moryty (matar através de privações, esfaimar), significando por isso "matar pela fome". O termo teria sido utilizado pela primeira vez pelo escritor Oleksa Musienko, num relatório apresentado à União dos Escritores Ucranianos de Kiev, em 1988.
No quarto Sábado do mês de Novembro a Ucrânia e as comunidades ucranianas implantadas em diversos países de acolhimento prestam homenagem às vítimas do Holodomor. A exposição documental
Holodomor - o genocídio Ucraniano - mostra em detalhes o que ocorreu no período e marca esta homenagem às vítimas em Porto Alegre.
A abertura da exposição será às 19h30 do dia 5 de dezembro com uma palestra de Percival Puggina sobre o centenário da Revolução Russa e, logo após, a apresentação dos fatos históricos pelo Padre Domingos Starepravo, organizador da exposição no Brasil.
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Governança privada

From the first stock markets of Amsterdam,London, and New York to the billions of electronic commerce transactions today, privately produced and enforced economic regulations are more common, more effective, and more promising than commonly considered.
global.oup.com

Visita na Cuba

Fui a Cuba para ver, in loco, as realizações do governo comunista. Visitei casas de família, um hospital e uma escola, modelos das políticas de moradia, saúde e... educação implantadas ao longo das últimas seis décadas pela chamada “revolução”. Voltei com uma infecção intestinal de fato e com a alma emocionalmente desarranjada por testemunhar tanto a miséria, quanto o sofrimento, a dissimulação e a desconfiança de quem as experimenta. (Continua no site)
Ver mais
Fui a Cuba para ver, in loco, as realizações do governo comunista. Visitei…
institutoliberal.org.br

Os 5 piores presidentes americanos


Perto de mamai


The popular perception of Americans is that they are independent and rootless, but the reality is that people tend not to move very far from their parents.
nytimes.com

segunda-feira, 20 de novembro de 2017

Bandeiras falsas


A government would never attack it's own people to make an excuse to attack another country would it?
educateinspirechange.org

Progresso não é natural


Humans invented it—and not that long ago.
theatlantic.com

Escravos brancos


Escravos europeus, senhores africanos: uma situação insólita que só nos últimos…
luispellegrini.com.br

O inferno diário de viver no bloco soviético


This month is the 100th anniversary of the Communist Party’s seizure of power in Petrograd, Russia.
mises.org

Convite



A arte de agachamento

Westerners have forgotten how to squat, and it's causing health problems.
quartzy.qz.com

domingo, 19 de novembro de 2017

Inovação

Xavier Cicera and Bill Maloney
Developing countries do surprisingly little when it comes to adopting advanced-country experience to upgrading their products, technologies, and business processes.
worldbank.org