Did you ever thought about your family tree closely? Common sense says that we all have 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 great grandparents and so on following a geometric progression, doubling in each generation. But, as someone said, “common sense is what tells us that the world is flat“.

If we assume that there is a new generation each 25 years and we go back 600 years, that’s 2²⁴ which is already a respectable number of 1 million grandparents. But things get trickier when we go further. For instance, if go back another 600 years (to 800AD), that will get us 2⁴⁸. That’s 281.5 trillion grandparents and with this we get a problem: in 800AD there weren’t that much people on the world. Actually, today we are only 6.3 billions.

So where’s the catch? You probably guessed it already. Our ancestors along the way married their cousins without knowing. This is called pedigree collapse and the closer the cousin, the bigger is the percentage of the collapse. Of course the worst case is when two siblings got married (think royalty-wise for instance) when it’s a major 50% collapse. With a first cousin it’s a 25% cut-down but collapses are still relevant with more distant cousins which is the most common case.

Some geneticists believe that everybody on earth is at least 50^th cousin to everybody else and most of us are a lot more closer, which really puts the mankind family concept into perspective. So, please keep up in mind that if you get mad with some complete stranger, chances are that he/she is probably your 25^th cousin. :)

• Europe is following Canada’s example on the use of shocking images in the anti-smoking campaign: a total of 42 images containing from rotten lungs to a man with a large tumour on his throat. The European comission will let each country do decide whether or not to include the images on cigarette packs. Somehow, I think that smokers will not be the only ones to get shocked by this.
• Should programs made by public broadcasters, like television and radio – paid with public funds – belong to public domain? Dutch parliamentarians believe so and they go further: it should be distributed online.
• In an interview to the MOJO magazine, the Icelandic singer Björk confessed that Amália Rodrigues is one of her 3 favourite female voices being povo que lavas no rio the favourite song from her.

In February the French Parliament approved a law proposed in December last year to ban the use in schools of the Muslin headscarf along with Sikh turbans, Jewish skullcaps and large Christian crucifixes. The law came into effect at the start of the new school year (in last month) and it’s created it’s first victims. I still find hard to believe this is really happening in an European country.

So, it’s ok to wear cloths with offensive writings, black leather covered in with metal chains, gothic, latex, or even to wear (really!) less. But if someone wants to cover him/herself more because of it’s own beliefs, then we make a big fuss about it, right?

How can someone’s use of a headscarf interfere with another’s space? It doesn’t. So the only argument I can see here is the fact that some young women are intimidated by Muslim men who oblige them to wear the scarf. Sure I don’t agree with such thing, but will this be solved with a law?

Hell no! At worst, it’ll make them get out of school sooner, preventing them from accessing education and information and this is the opposite of what should be done. Using this law is no solution to this problem and besides, what right has the French government to force someone not to do something by forbidding it, based of the fact that they might be being forced to do it? Is this any better? What about the majority that use, not only the headscarf, but also turbans or skullcaps, and that truly believe on their convictions and wish (freely) to use it? In the end they have two options: disobey their religion, or compromise their education. This is not opening their lifes, but rather restraining them more.

Religion is part of one’s identity and denying that makes me have an itch on my stomach. Sure I’m aware that religion can preach extremist ideas. But if we want to proclaim a Europe of tolerance in a time of globalization, I certainly can’t think this is a good way to deal with the problem. France claimes that it is just defending its nation secularism, but I see as just another form of desguised intolerance.

Qualquer português que tenha pairado algum tempo pelo estrangeiro, já foi eventualmente atropelado por um (f)igoroso figó! quando disse o seu país de origem. Nada de novo, afinal, o Luís Figo é uma das nossas marcas nacionais no estrangeiro a par do vinho do Porto, do Algarve e do fado. Enquanto distíco nacional não há como negar o valor do fado, mas confesso que não é o meu o tipo de música. Na verdade, até sei muito pouco sobre ele e a prova está… nos pacotes de açucar da Delta :)
Passo a explicar. No mês passado, a Delta editou uma (excelente) série alusiva aos 100 anos do fado. Desde Mariza a Carlos Paredes, passando pela incontornável Amália, os grandes símbolos estão todos lá, mas houve um em particular que me chamou à atenção por destoar do ar formal ou recatado dos restantes. Um jovem acompanhado à guitarra por uma mulher (imagem do lado). Se o olharmos de perto, nota-se que as tatuagens do jovem (acalorado) são dignas do kamasutra!
Mas afinal, era eu que não conhecia O outro lado do fado. Hoje, quase por acidente, acabei por descobrir que se trata da capa de um CD/livro vendido este ano pelo público.
Lá se vai a minha teoria de que havia um ilustrador na Delta que nos andava a pregar partidas.

It’s 4:30am. It’s Sunday morning. There’s a bluesy tune on the playlist. And I’m finnaly making the big confession. I’ve a congenital problem. I don’t know how to pick shoes.
I just don’t. In my last attempt to buy a pair, I made sure at the shop that they were comfy. The result? Five blisters and a cranky mood. It’s no use. Everytime I give some pair of shoes a try, I end up crying for some sleazy sneakers. Some have born unable to distinguish colors. I’ve born unable to pick nice shoes.

The portuguese soccer team keeps swinging between brilliant and disastrous exhibitions and reminding me why I prefer other sports to soccer. After a quite humiliating tie against Liechtenstein, whose population wouldn’t fill Lisbon main stadium, Portugal defeated Russia today by an impressive 7-1. As usual, for the next few days, soccer fans will formulate new theories (or proclaim the correctness of their previous ones) on how we can win the world cup, foresee the next results and, of course, blame someone for this roller-coaster performances. It’s not a pattern, it’s just soccer passion and there’s nothing wrong about it, I just don’t understand it, I guess.

Dois mistérios para fechar o dia.

O primeiro. Porque será que à noite há uma coluna de fumo a sair (apenas) do meu departamento? Será alguma investigação sobre uma nova tecnologia de comunicação wireless, neste caso, por sinais de fumo? Ideias?

O segundo. Porque é que, até hoje, aparentemente eu era a única pessoa que não sabia que a generalidade dos museus estão fechados à segunda-feira? Ora bolas…

Henri Cartier-Bresson
Rue Mouffetard, Paris, 1954

PS: I’ve upload some of the photos I’ve scanned last friday. Check them here.

O autocarro soluçava no meio do trânsito à pelo menos umas duas horas. Quem ainda não tinha adormecido com o relato da bola, ia como eu, entretido a ler ou a olhar a paisagem distorcida pela chuva lânguida no vidro da janela; talvez a pensar na morte da bezerra ou do cordeiro ou do potro. Sim, porque havia tempo para tudo naquela viagem: o trânsito estava adormecido e sem vontade de ir a lado algum.
O sol, esse, já tinha picado o ponto e ido para casa… É sempre a mesma coisa. A continuar assim alguém vai ter que se queixar ao encarregado: cada vez sai mais cedo e deixa mais trabalho por fazer na bancada. Sempre quero ver que desculpas vai arranjar desta vez. Bom, adiante.
No banco da frente, um puto ensinava à mãe quem era o son goku e o vegeta ilustrando-os nas gotículas do vidro quando, de repente, da parte da frente do autocarro vieram gritos. Meio autocarro levantou-se e a outra metade esticou o pescoço.
O motivo do alarido parecia ser o homem que estava parado no fundo do corredor. Alto, maçudo, dava-lhe aí uns 50 anos. Mais não, pareceu-me que já tinha demasiados. Vestia um boné do euro e uma t-shirt da nike. Numa mão, segurava um saco do feira-nova e na outra um revólver. Lamento, mas não lembro da marca deste.
Pelo jeito da coisa, ele não queria apenas uma moedinha e todos já tinham entendido isso porque o saco já começava a encher e ele vinha em direcção do fundo do autocarro. Eu precisava de formular um plano mais rápido que a subscrição de crédito por telefone. Olhei à volta. No banco do lado um homem ainda com o Jornal de Notícias na mão olhava para mim e acenou-me com a cabeça ao que eu retribuí instintivamente. Como não o conhecia de lado nenhum, deduzi pouco depois que não se tratava de um cumprimento e que o meu pedido de crédito tinha sido aprovado. Perdão, o plano. O plano tinha sido formulado. Ficámos à espera.
Assim que o saco do feira-nova me foi mostrado, o homem do jornal levantou-se e aproximou-se por detrás do larápio. Mais um segundo e tudo estaria terminado quando de repente um berro veio do banco detrás.
“Golo! Gooollo! Tomai lá que é para aprenderem!” – Acordei. Estremunhado, virei-me para trás e esbocei qualquer coisa que pretendia ser um sorriso. No banco do lado, uma senhora grávida ressonava enquanto que lá fora continuava a mesma chuva frouxa – “Mais 10 minutos, Paulo. Mais 10 minutos”.

About 128-bit encryption keys:

“Complexities are expressed as orders of magnitude. If an algorithm has a processing complexity of 2¹²⁸, then 2¹²⁸ operations are required to break the algorithm. (These operations may be complex and time-consuming).
Still, if you assume that you have enough computing speed to perform a million operations every second and you set a million parallel processors against the task, it will still take over 10⁹ years to recover the key. That’s a billion times the age of the universe.”

from this cryptography book.

Impressive? Yes. But there’s a flaw on this theory: technology is not constant over time. More processing power together with brains writting more efficient cracking algorithms is all that will take to get 128-bit keys breakable during my life time. And that’s what I call impressive.