The creator of this book is an Italian design/animation company called Delicatessen that putted together 400 works of 24 Japanese artists. Now, they created another book called Mascotte! which does not only have illustration works but also reaches several other fields of design, photography, advertising works and more.

 
Still on the illustration line, check the results of this contest which had for the theme, Gary Larson’s work The far side.

It’s not a very good year for selling chestnuts, miss E. said. She is 73, and spent a big part of them doing it so she ought to know. She started by helping her relatives and through the years she sold at almost every city in the country. There isn’t anything relevant about chestnuts that she doesn’t know about.

First, offered me two extra chestnuts. Because I was friendly she said. Then, gave me big beautiful smile when I asked to take some pictures of her. I’ve promissed her a copy. I hope she likes it.

Some of my friends would say I’m a plan maker by nature. Truth is, I hate to make plans, but I dislike even more the consequences of not making them. I would rather toy with a plan at it’s own speed and give birth to it when we both think it’s ready. I don’t see this has a passive attitude although I know this has as much of wishful thinking as naiveness.

My future is starting to stumble on me and plans are required so that I don’t fall but rather lift off. Faster that I wished, my last school semester is running towards it’s end, and with that the closer is my internship and graduation. Delaying this for another year sounds appealing but I can’t afford that. Rather, my parents can’t afford having me another year in the university. I need to get rid of this feeling of being such a weight to them and perhaps even pay them back somehow to justify why they did so many sacrifices to allow me to do what I wanted. For that, I’m the one that has to do some sacrifices now: this semester expects me to work like mad while at the same time I’m craving for some vacations. Maybe I’ll have to make some plans to have some at some point.

(Meanwhile, posting should get back to normal in the next days. It has been raining on my raft lately so I’ve decided to suspend posts for the sake of the blog itself.)

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…