24h of worldwide commercial flights in less than 2min

I am a certified Frequent Traveller. At some point in my life, I spent more time in airports and plans than home, and most of my shopping came from free shops all over the world. My office was so close to the airport that I could tell the time of day by looking to the sky - if this is a Singapore Airlines flight followed by a Japan Airlines one, then it must be 13h45.

So, when a friend sent an animation with all scheduled civil flights over a 24h period boiled down to less than 2 min, I was in a bit of a shock. Statistically, every day 93 000 flights are starting from about 9 000 airports. At any given hour of the day, you can find between 8 000 and 13 000 airplanes in the air. A lot of things going on in the sky above us...

Note: This animation is a part of joint project between the Swiss Science Center and the Institute of Applied Information Technology InIT (Zurich University of Applied Sciences, Winterthur, Switzerland). It was produced to be shown on the high definition 3D-Globe Orbitarium in Technorama

Caipirinha

Last year, business trip oblige, I celebrated a big zero birthday in São Paulo (Brazil). The party, that finished a very late hour by all standards, included Swedish chants in a posh Sushi restaurant down town and an undisclosed number of capirinhas. Most night – for the best and the worst – remains in blurred foggy bits and pieces. All I can say is that the headache the day after was excruciating. Between aspirin and aspirin, I promised myself that my next big zero birthday would be celebrated in a bio-sophisticated healthy spa resort, with no short supply of chamomile, peppermint and green tea, spirogyra and açaí concoctions, and (maybe) some oat cookies with chocolate chips and carrot sticks.

I managed to keep away from caipirinha until two days ago.... a dear friend is leaving Zurich, and throw away a memorable See You Soon Party. Swedish chants were omitted from the celebrations, but several bottles of the finest cachaça didn't see the end of the party. As a result of sugar shortage, Malibulinha was created (replace all spirit by Malibu, which is sweet rum). Again, the same piercing headache the morning after, and the same vision health drinks and new age environments.

Caipirinha (pronounced kye-peer-EEN-ya) is a combination of muddled lime, sugar, and cachaça (pronounced ka-SHAH-sa), stirred or mixed and served over ice in a rocks glass. It is considered to be the national drink of Brazil.

For many years, it was a poor people drink, and it is believed that it was first consumed by slaves on the sugar cane plantations in the country's northeast in the mid-1500's. Its name is derived from the word caipira, which means hayseed or hick or rube, followed by the disminutive -inha, which means small or little. Literally, it means little hayseed or little hick or little rube. When referred to the drink, caipirinha is a feminine word.

Caipirinha's base, cachaça, is a clear spirit distilled directly from the juice of sugar cane. Cachaça is also known as aguardente (fire water), pinga (drop), caninha (little cane) or arrebenta-peito (chest smasher). Unlike popular belief, cachaça and rum are not the same thing: while most rum is made from molasses, a by-product of sugar production (from either sugar cane or sugar beets), cachaça is produced directly from cane juice. The fermentation agent is by tradition fubá (maize flour); the distillation unit is a copper pot still. The resulting beverage is either bottled or stored in wood barrels for aging.

Caipirinha is quite easy to do, though a certain attention to detail is required. You start with limes. Before cutting them, roll them on a board with the palm of your hand. That helps to release the juices. Then trim the ends, cut the limes into quarters lengthwise. Put four to six wedges into a heavy-bottomed glass and sprinkle them with a tablespoon of granulated sugar. Superfine sugar is better,because it will dissolves more rapidly. You can also use sirup. Next, comes the crucial step: thoroughly grind the sugar and the lime with a pestle or a muddler to release the oils in the skin of the lime, as well as its juice. How long you should muddle is somehow controversial. You can find all sort of recommendations in the literature. To some, the recommended time is no longer than 15 seconds, to others the ideal time sits between 3 to 5 minutes.

Finally, fill the glass with ice cubes and cachaça. And another controversial topic - shake or stir? In Brazil, the caipirinha is stirred not shaken. The bartender gives the caipirinha a few stirs with a spoon. You receive the caipirinha, stir it a little more, take a sip to taste it, and wait a little before start drinking to allow the sugar to dissolve totally and the flavors to release. But, if you cannot wait a few minutes, then shaking is the optimal way to ensure the mixing and melding of all the ingredients. Finally, put a straw on it and serve. Cuca Brazuca shows how:

Saúde!

The Danish Poet

The Danish Poet is was written, directed, and animated by Torill Kove and narrated by Liv Ullmann.It has won an Academy Award (2007) and a Genie Award (2007) for best animated short film. It follows a poet called Kaspar, whom his psychiatrist suggests to travel to Norway to meet a famous writer called Sigrid Undset. Little was he to know that the bad weather, an angry dog, a slippery plank, a careless postman, hungry goats and a broken thumb would change his destiny.... Or, how seemingly unrelated factors might play important roles in the big scheme of things after all.

Borrowed ideas - Case Studies from the Groat Center for Sleep Disorders and Her Morning Elegance

Intertextuality as a concept was first introduced by Bulgarian-French philosopher Julia Kristeva in 1966. Kristeva didn't believe a text could be an isolated entity which operates in a self-contained manner. Any text, she said, is the absorption and transformation of another. Meaning, it could be an author borrowing and transforming a prior text, or a reference to one text in doing another. However, intertextuality is too often used to excuse plagiarism, as one of my favorite Spanish writers, Lucia Etxebarria, has done on a couple of occasions. I still like her books, but one does wonder where true creation begins and "inspiration" ends.

Her Morning Elegance was the release single from the album The Opposite Side of the Sea (2009) by Israeli artist Oren Lavie.; the video was directed by Eyal Landesman and Yuval & Merav Nathan:

When I start looking for trivia of Her Morning Elegance video, I was far to imagine that I would bump into yet another intertextuality case. It turns out the makers of Her Morning Elegance had taken one of Mitchell Rose's films as a source for their own video, borrowing more than a couple of ideas from it. Rose, was not to happy about it and bitterly said: It does matter where you “TAKE this from.” Intellectual property — ideas — are all an artist has.

The film is the award winning Case Studies From the Groat Center for Sleeping Disorders (2002), and in Rose's own words is a faux scientific investigation study of ASDICT (Adult Sleep Disorder Induced by Child Trauma), showing glimpses of rare archive footage from the renowned - but fictional - Groat Center for Sleep Disorders.

Unter dem See neben Zurich

Things you can find under the Zurichsee: bicycles, shopping carts, ski motorcycles, refrigerators, microwawes, vespas, boats, cellphones, office chairs, bar stools, glasses. The water is potable, though, and swimming in the lake is very popular.

In case you lose something, you can always ask the Seepolizei to find it for you. It will cost you, of course (about 150 CHF per hour). But, you will only pay if they find it. Wedding bands and engagement rings are at the top of their requests.

The future is coming - and it is only 498 years away

In the future almost nothing will be as it is today. It will kind of look like an iPhone, but with an extra piece you can lose sometimes.... At least according to this Sarcastic Gamers parody of Microsoft's future visions series:

And the original Microsoft's vision of 2019:

A lingua portuguesa e muito rica - Palavra do dia III

Cerca de um terco das pessoas que vivem em Zurique nao sao suicas. Isto sem contar com os secondos, a segunda geracao de emigrantes, que alem de schwiizertueuetsch, falam tambem a lingua dos seus pais. O mais normal na rua e ouvir varios idiomas, desde os mais corriqueiros, como o ingles ou espanhol ate obscuros dialectos africanos. No entanto, os portugueses, apesar de serem uma das maiores comunidades de emigrantes, pensam que ninguem mais os percebe e que podem discutir onde calhe, alto e bom tom, inconfessaveis secredos. Eu tambem fazia o mesmo, ate que me dei conta que nao estou sozinha e que esteja onde esteja, ha sempre grandes probabilidades que o vizinho do lado seja portugues.

De isto nao se aperceberam duas simpaticas senhoras que encontrei no outro dia num tram, a uma hora relativamente sossegada. O tram estava quase vazio, o que convidava a por conversa em dia. Sem um aviso, um sinal sequer que ia presenciar uma revelacao e um momento de solene transcendencia, ouco atras de mim “ O qu’ essa gaija e, e’ma ganda songamonga”. Reconheco a palavra gaija, e os tempos verbais sao correctos. Isto e portugues, e portugues dos bem falados. ”Ai filha, o ela quer e c’o desembelgado do marido lhe faca tudo em casa”, responde-lhe a amiga, tres oitavas mais acima do necessario. Tento camuflar-me com os estofos para poder continuar a ouvir a conversa. “Tu nao t’amofines que ja vais ver c’a tua cunhada ja lhe vai dizer tres coisas”, continua a amiga. Neste momento, tenho que correr para a saida, mais ainda vou a tempo de ouvir “ Troncha, o qu’ ela e’ma troncha! O qu’ela fez foi’ma rebaixolice…. “. Uma vez na rua, aponto as palavras chave: songamonga, desembelgado, amofines, troncha e rebaixolice. Desconheco o significado, mas nao me parece que estas senhoras estejam a falar “dela” em termos elogiosos.

Chego a casa, e abro dicionario. Comeco por procurar songamonga . Songamonga, ou songa, diz-se de uma pessoa que e sonsa e disfarçada. Em definitiva, e uma expressao pejorativa, que tambem se poder aplicar a alguem que e apatico, lerdo, sem iniciativa ou lento. Francamente, nao vejo como e que alguem com estas caracteristicas pode aspirar a que o marido lhe faca tudo em casa.

A segunda palavra da lista e desembelgado. Tal como suponho, este termo nao esta relacionado com retirar a nacionalidade a um cidadao belga. Alias, desembelgado nem sequer existe como palavra. Mas, podemos encontrar embelgado como forma verbal de embelgar. Que tambem nao tem nada que ver com conceder a nacionalidade belga a um cidadao. Embelgar e um regionalismo do Alentejo e das Beiras, que significa dividir um terreno em belgas (pequeno campo cultivado) por meio de regos paralelos, ou dispor o mato roçado em linhas paralelas. Algo me diz que o marido desta senhora seria conhecido na capital como sendo um esgroviado. Ou seja, alguem sem juizo e mal arranjado. Nem sei como e que “ela” esta a espera que “ele” lhe faca tudo em casa, porque claramente deixar estas a tarefas a cargo de um desembelgado parece ser um risco demasiado grande. Mas, “ela” la sabe.

Continuo com amofines, que resulta ser um tempo verbal de amofinar. Ou seja, afligir, arreliar, apoquentar. Sabio conselho a ter em conta, sobretudo se a cunhada vai tomar cartas neste assunto. Nao sei se a cunhada e uma mulher de forte personalidade e verbo rapido, mas acho que para uma songamonga casada com um desembelgado, sao necessarias mais que tres coisas para repor a verdade.

Restam-me troncha e rebaixolice. Troncha, feminino de troncho, diz-se de alguem que foi privado de algum membro ou apêndice, ou mutilado. Informalmente, utiliza-se como sinonimo de torto ou tortuoso. Ou seja, que alem de ser lerda, “ela” e torta. Estas condicoes sao ideais para cometer uma rebaixolice, que e como quem diz em sentido popular, uma sacanagem ou uma baixaria. Suponho que o suficiente para justicar o agravio e a intervencao da cunhada neste tenebroso assunto. Ainda, tentei seguir o desenlace desta historia e apanhei varias vezes o mesmo tram, mas nunca mais me voltei a cruzar com estas senhoras. Uma pena.