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The Social Sadness

  It's been a while since I last logged in my Facebook account. Why? Because I was spending too much time on it, I was involuntarily checking the page every 15 minutes for updates, craving for news from people that are currently not part of my life anymore. That is the negative effect Facebook was having on me: forcing me to spend time and energy with more people that I can handle, all together, and was not giving me the reward I always got, which is to become more intimate with each individual, have the feeling of being part of someone's life and have someone be part of mine. Millions of users access the website daily for many different purposes, and I was already starting to wonder if I was alone in my dilemma. Turns out there are many of us, books have already been published on this topic, I would not be surprised to find a Facebook page dedicated to this. I will share all the different ways Facebook seems to be affecting people on the next lines, and if you agree, well... I...
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Political Joke

  Since this year we will have elections running in Brasil, here is a political joke (quite funny, but unfortunately this REALLY happens) about how things work in South America: Brazilian government wanted to build a new bridge. So, they started evaluating the projects of 3 different companies: a jJapanese a German and a Brazilian. The Japanese project would cost U$1 billion and would take 2 years to be accomplished. The German project would cost U$2 billions and take 1 and a half year to be accomplished. Then the Brazilian came to show his proposal. - The construction of this bridge will cost U$6 billions and take 1 and a half year to be accomplished. Being curious about the high cost, the government employee asked why it costs so much more then the others. The business man then explained: - Well, I will take 2 billions, you will take 2 billions, and we hire the German to build the bridge for us. The Brazilian company was chosen to build the bridge.
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What does Google have to say about you?

 Times change, mankind evolves, the computational power jumps exponentially... Some would say: "Where the hell does human touch go in this history?". Well, some would be completely right. Unfortunately for the ones like me who had little opportunity to get to know many of my family members, and even when I did have the chance I was too shy to talk about something relevant, the internet and technology could mean something bigger than just more expensive-mobile-cloud stuff. Have you ever tried to search for your name on google? Or maybe search for someone you know? More important than that: have you ever wondered what your kids will get when they search for you on the web? Or your grandkids? Or maybe someone further in your genealogical tree? Sometimes I ask myself how would my father or my mother think when they were my age. Would it be weird at all to talk to them? Of course, it would, times were very different back there, but anyway, knowing them back there could help a lot ...
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The Three Pleasures Theory

Why sometimes we can't achieve what we desire? And why sometimes we don't even know what we want? How can you motivate yourself and your friends to take things seriously and work hard for what they want? Maybe there isn't a magic trick to do it... But could we at least find out what makes people the way they are? I will suggest a (crazy) approach to find the answer.  If we put aside all the religious/ethical thoughts, we normally don't know for sure what is the meaning of life, why we live, and so on. Personally, I believe that our purpose is to be happy, as long as it does not imply the unhappiness of others. But what makes us happy?  I tried to resume all our desires in three main categories of pleasures, which would motivate us to take action and pursue our objectives. The esteem pleasure The physical pleasure The social pleasure The first one is the pleasure we have when we achieve something that makes us more confident, and for this reason, called the "esteem...
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Tachikoma perception

  The serie (and movies)  Ghost in the Shell  was an enormous success, and I really recommend it for all anime lovers. There is however one point in the story of the  Stand Alone Complex  when the  Tachikomas  gain individuality. That point is really interesting because then, they claim to understand what God is. While they had a collective consciousness they never really cared about what would happen to them when they "stopped working" (or die, if you will). However when they realized each one of them was one special unique being, they started caring. And then they realized God is just the representation of emptiness. It is the equivalent to "0" in digital world. It is the symbol created to represent the absence. Indeed, one of God's main role is concerning the pos-life, what happens to us after we pass away. If we really did know we would not die, would we really think about God? Just something to think about...
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Honesty

 As promised in the last century, let's talk about honesty. In the  book mentioned before , honesty was mainly determined by the education someone receives of their parents/as they were growing up and the values of society today. A good example is given by the act of stealing a coke from a dorm. refrigerator and stealing money left there. People usually don`t see stealing food as something wrong, especially from a public refrigerator. "Many cokes were already stolen from me, I am just taking back what is mine from somebody else...", one may think. However, to take the money left there is something else. People feel guilty about taking cash that does not belong to them. But isn`t it stealing after all? One point raised is that we are deeply influenced by environmental factors. It means we are more likely to steal in places where stealing is not something that bad. In Brasil, some people think that earning money at someone else misfortune or manipulation is something to be ...
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