Blog JR Denuncia: Guerra Psicologica Contra Vinho No Brasil

Pelotas, Sao Paulo E Brasilia, 
Urgente, Newswire

A presidente da associacao de blogueiros de vinho de Capao Redondo publicou ontem uma carta aberta em todos os grandes jornais do pais denunciando uma guerra psicologica que tem como intuito abalar a credibilidade, vendas, producao e toda cadeia do vinho de uva no pais.

Segundo a presidente da associacao Paula Notobas, ha uma campanha promovida por agentes terroristas de mercado que tentam sacar beneficios as custas do liquido precioso e do medo do publico em geral. Essa rede de agentes espalha boatos infundados como ''vinho espumante gaucho nao he o segundo melhor do mundo'', ou ''ha muito vinho importado que custa muito, mas muito mais que vale'', ''ha vinhos que mal contem uva dentro da garrafa'', ''muito vinho argentino foi comprado no chile para ser engarrafado na argentina'' ou ainda a horrivel calunia ''as promocoes de internet sao armadilhas que funcionam sozinhas, parece que as pessoas querem pular dentro da jaula, nos nem esperavamos que fossem tao trouxas''.

A associacao de blogueiros de vinho de Capao Redondo esta organizando um protesto para o dia 31 de dezembro na avenida paulista, perto da meia noite. Espera-se que milhares de pessoas atendam ao clamor.

Perguntar Ofende: Schumacher, Deus E O Bambu

Escrevo essa sem saber o desfecho da pancada que o Schumy (nos numeros o maior de todos, no talento que deu resultado tambem entre os top 5)  deu nos alpes franceses, mas nao pude deixar de perceber que varias pessoas enviaram mensagem via internet dizendo que estao rezando para deus protege-lo (Schumacher).

Me pergunto se houvesse um deus por que ele/ela deixaria isso acontecer para comeco de conversa? Faz sentido deixar a desgraca acontecer para depois ''proteger'' o coitado apos reza/pedido dos fieis?

Faz sentido rezar para "deus" curar alguem com doenca terminal se "deus" -para comeco de conversa- poderia ter deixado a pessoa sem passar por essa?

Maximo que se pode fazer he torcer pela recuperacao da pessoa, sabendo que ''ondas positivas'' ou reza nao tem efeito algum tambem para essas coisas. Estatisticamente comprovado; sinto, turma da religiao.

Ah, queimar incenso prejudica vias areas e pular onda na praia dia 31 da doenca.

Tomara que o Schumy saia dessa ileso. 

Brazil X USA: Diferenca Abismal. Leitura De Sabado

Nesse feriado maravilhoso (25/12), pude colocar parte das leituras em dia. Uma em particular me chamou bem a atencao. 

Mais uma diferenca gritante entre 'nos' e 'eles'. Dessa vez no uso da informacao. Apos ler o artigo (link AQUI http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21591855-novel-way-measure-influence-protest-movement-watery-tea) , gostaria que voce pensasse se apos toda a onda de protesto com black bibas alguem coletou algum dado e se sim, se fez uso relevante dele. USA usa estatistica para tudo, e essa tal de estatistica preve muita coisa, de comportamento de germes a mercados acionarios. 

Aqui estatistica he aquela coisa que aparece em futebol na globo, numero de passes e desarmes por jogador ou passes errados (no futebol americano funciona, no soccer, nao)

Boa leitura e reflexoes. Leitura curta.

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Jesus, ala, moises...quem trabalha nao percebe o espaco-tempo passando.

Ultima sexta do 'ano'. Mientras tanto un Iggy Pop para alegrar a vida.....

Frase Da Semana

Natal he aquela epoca do ano em que visitamos pessoas que evitamos o ano todo.

Mais Que Uma Perola, Mas Uma Joia.....

http://classificados.folha.uol.com.br/empregos/2013/12/1390190-mcdonalds-pede-que-funcionarios-evitem-fast-food.shtml

Hilario. Mesma coisa que a Ford dizer que os funcionarios nao devem comprar ou dirigir os carros deles porque sao inseguros, a PMorris proibir funcionarios de fumar, importador de vinho contar aos funcionarios que os vinhos deles sao podres, academia de ginastica proibir funcionarios de malhar porque os aparelhos sao piratas e perigosos, a sococo dizer que agua de coco da cancer...e por ai vai.

Piada real para terminar bem a semana.

Qual O Vinho Do Ano De 2013 Para Voce?

Alguem ai teve um vinho que marcou o ano de alguma maneira, boa ou ruim?? Qual o criterio para tal escolha?

Foi o ano que mais comprei e vendi vinho, e ainda assim bebi pouquissimo. Degustacoes sim, mas garrafas poucas.

Eu revelo o  meu no dia 1/1. Nao pode ser de importacao minha.

Festivus!!!

Dezembro 23. Como muitos sabem hoje he dia de Festivus.

Um grande momento do humor no mundo. Somente para os que sabem e entendem os grandes Larry David & Seinfeld.

Aqui: http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/12/23/happy-festivus-9-people-who-went-viral-for-airing-their-grievances-in-2013/

E aqui

Açao Entre Amigos Pode Virar Moda E Fazer Estrago Nos Bancos

Voce ja teve que ir a banco na vida? Esta satisfeito com o servico, as taxas, o custo que estao impondo? Seguro que nao.

Ha uma pequena onda se formando no Brasil e eu creio que isso tem condicoes de virar algo revolucionario (acho que os bancos ja perceberam, e estao aflitos; so ver o tanto que seu gerente liga para voce): 

Amigos que emprestam dinheiro a amigos em troca de juros ou participacao nas empresas. Nao é segredo que sobra dinheiro para algumas pessoas. Advogados, medicos, etc. E essa gente esta se dando conta que nao ha mais investimento facil e seguro com mega retorno. Os fundos e bolsa mais imoveis estao lixo so de retorno. E ai o cara empresta contente aos amigos (sem muita garantia) a 2.0% mes. Muito melhor que qualquer fundo dos bons ou qualquer aventura empresarial por bolos, boutiques de moda, franquia de perfume.

10.5 % de Selic (nao sei se para ai) com 6.5% de IPCA de um retorno real perto do ridiculo para padrao Brasil. Saudades dos juros reais de 10%?

Estou convicto que o varejo bancario tem chances de se ferrar. Merecem, nos trataram mal por muito tempo. Anotem essa e me cobrem depois.

É Natal (Tambem)

Nao sei se alguem reparou....quem trabalha muito (trouxa como eu) nem se deu conta que mais um ano ja Elvis. Agradeco de verdade aos comentaristas de plantao e ocasionais aqui. Criticas contra ou a favor de artigos sao sempre recebidas com interesse. Atrair pessoas diferentes, melhores, para aprender mais sempre foi o objetivo desse espaço. Alem de me rebelar contra o monte de bebado puxa-saco de importadores que existe por ai.

Desejo (mas nao garanto) saude para voces e familias em 2014, 5600 ou sei la em que ano preferem estar.

A um eleitor desejo que passe nos concursos logo e que meu dinheiro dos impostos lhe de chances de conhecer o mundo enquanto ajuda Zes Ruelas aos domingos que ficaram sem passaporte ou dinheiro.

Deixo uma foto minha e da familia em agradecimento.

Mais Sobre Fraude Nos Alimentos E Azeites

http://noticias.r7.com/jornal-da-record-news/2013/11/27/advogado-da-proteste-explica-fraudes-no-azeite-e-em-outros-alimentos

Somos trouxas diplomados com altos premios.

E voce so comprando muzzarela de bufala porque era melhor? Ou aquele hamburguer de picanha?

Perguntar Ofende: A Crise Do Cafe

Acabou meu lote de cafe que D Barata comprou p mim em Seattle. Entrei em panico ao pereceberque teria que recorrer aos cafes oferecidos por aqui. O bom me custa um rim ao custo mafia chinesa.

Duas perguntas: vc sabia que a cafeicultura atravessa mais uma mega crise? Vc ja reparou no preco dos cafeses por ai? Pois he, estao ainda mais caros hoje que em dez de 2012.

Produtor de cafe he igual a importador de cerveja e vinho.... cai na conversa euforica sobre consumo, etc e aumenta a producao so p levar ferro na safra e depois...

Tenho duas opcoes:esperar ate janeiro qdo hega novo lote ou pagar o que pedem.

Alimentos Organicos Nao Terao Prioridade No Planeta? Como Ansin?

Artigo do 'the economist'. Secao 'Leaders' da semana passada.

Sem GMOs o mundo nao conseguira produzir o tanto de alimento que vai consumir. GMOs podem ajudar tanto no combate a pragas quanto no muito melhor aproveitamento da energia solar e agua, aumentando em muito a produtividade da fotossintese, ao passo que os alimentos organicos puros de origem nao produzem muita coisa por unidade de terra (ainda que se bem cultivados fazem com que o solo volte a ser vivo, seguram erosao, promovem vida fora e dentro da biosfera).

Como ex-agronomo que acompanha o mercado vos digo que nao temos 'outra alternativa' (SIC); Nao ha tecnologia em vista para se aumentar a producao que nao seja atraves de GMOs. Obvio que ha riscos para fauna/flora nativa dos locais nos casos de GMOs que carregam inseticidas e genes resistentes a herbicidas, mas tambem ha coisas muito uteis como aumento de vitaminas e minerais dentro das plantas (ainda que ''artificialmente embutidos''). Exemplo? Ferro a mais em arroz plantado na Asia. Ferro combate -- entre outras coisas-- anemia. E black blocs. GMOs podem ser utilizados tambem positivamente aos humanos, ao contrario que os ''ativistas ecologicos'' pregam pelo planeta.

Alimento organico deveria ter prioridade em lugares onde a producao de graos principalmente nao seja possivel. Que tal terrenos vazios que tanto existem em todas as cidades? Ou aqueles locais onde maquinario nao pode operar por conta de declividade ou mesmo custos? Prefeituras e governos poderiam alugar terrenos que estao ociosos. Sem superfaturamento de alugueis e arrendamentos.

Deliciosos morangos com gosto e cor de revolver de feira. Somente tecnologia GMO pode fazer essa delicia.

Terroir, Fim Do Misterio?

Um dos grandes mitos da viticultura parece que ja era. Lo siento muchachos, mas para tudo ha uma explicacao, ate para o "misterioso" conceito de terroir....

E ainda ha quem pense que americano nao sabe fazer vinhos, alias, ha quem escreva dizendo isso. Sou O fan de vinho europeu, mas quem sabe o que e como se faz esta nos EEUU. No caso americano laboratorio tambem he usado para o bem...ao contrario de uma tchurma que usa alquimia mesmo (novo mundo em geral, mas nao totalmente)

Ainda bem que nao fui estudar em Davis, passaria vergonha por la. Boa leitura, adieu terroir cabeca de bacalhau.

Link abaixo.

http://extra.globo.com/noticias/saude-e-ciencia/dna-revela-que-micro-organismos-sao-essenciais-para-sabor-do-vinho-10892936.html

A verdadeira french connection....

Dica Cultural

Saudavel obsessao: Saber mais sobre o passado para entender o presente e prever o que vem por ai. Cliche necessario de lado, vai aqui mais um livro that fits the bill, nesse caso o bem escrito ‘a ditatura derrotada’, de Elio Gaspari.

Livro gira em torno de Geisel e Golbery. Duas figuras que se apresentam na minha memoria infantil apenas.

De espantoso sobre o livro? Que a historia no Brasil se repete em intervalos muito mais curtos que parece e que continuamos na mesma estrada do tal futuro espetacular e imediato que nunca chega. 

Em 1970 e poucos o povao no RJ ja destruia trens em protestos, a economia era digna de elogios do American Treasury Secretary, eramos o modelo a ser seguido. E a bolsa de valores apresentava aumentos insustentaveis. Meu pai que o diga, levou um p tombo.

Nao sou pro-ditadura, a nao ser que eu seja o ditador, mas da nojo de comparar o patrimonio de vida de alguem como Geisel (ou ate mesmo o Figueiredo, que figura) com os politicos/presidentes de hoje.

Mais um livro lido e aprovado pelo JRatao Institute of Vague and Superficial, Albeit Necessary Culture, LLC. Livro doado por minhas secretarias loiras gemeas, a quem agradeco de publico.

Pequenos Vinhos, Grandes Preços

No champagne, no vinho argentino, chileno, americano, no brunello, no barolo ha os vinhos do caipira que quer se mostrar ou daqueles que estão simplesmente aprendendo. Cometemos erros quando somos iniciantes no vinho e geralmente os erros diminuem a medida que o tempo passa e a cintura fica mais aparente.

Tomei duas safras de Barolo Pio Cesare na vida. Sabado passado tomei a 2008. Um vinho pobre pelo preço. Muito so-so por tanto que se fala por ai. Mas quem tanto fala dele por ai? Juvenis, claro. Ninguem que ja tomou um bom barolo na vida classificaria esse tiozinho entre os grandes.

Barolo, Brunello e Champagne sao grandes decepcoes para muito enofilo iniciante por ai. No reveillon abrem champagnes de R$ 300.00 e na hora da celebração ninguém tem coragem de dizer que o vinho nao é grande coisa.

É como ir a um velório e dizer que o sanduíche (caro) estava ruim. Deixa para la.

Cuidado com vinhos que são famosos nas bocas e canetas de muitos.

Se beber, nao blogueie.

Possivel Catastrofe Em Marcha Na Europa?

O maior risco sempre fica com o produtor esse heroi desvalorizado. Quem ja plantou sabe como he.

http://www.oliveoiltimes.com/olive-oil-basics/fears-disease-could-spell-disaster-for-europes-olive-trees/36898

Leitura De Sabado.

Homens x mulheres. Diferentes, sim, melhores talvez....

Vive la différence!A new technique has drawn wiring diagrams of the brains of the two sexes. The contrast between them is illuminating.

Dec 7th 2013 | From the print edition

MEN and women do not think in the same ways. Few would disagree with that. And science has quantified some of those differences. Men, it is pretty well established, have better motor and spatial abilities than women, and more monomaniacal patterns of thought. Women have better memories, are more socially adept, and are better at dealing with several things at once. There is a lot of overlap, obviously. But on average these observations are true.

Suggesting why they are true in evolutionary terms is a game anyone can play. One obvious idea is that because, in the days of hunting and gathering, men spent more time wandering away from camp, their brains needed to be adapted to able to find their way around. They also spent more time tracking, fighting and killing things, be they animals or intrusive neighbours. Women by contrast, politicked among themselves and brought up the children, so they needed to be adapted to enable them to manipulate each other’s and their children’s emotions to succeed in their world.

In this section

• Vive la différence!
• Smelling a rat
• Yutu or me-too?
• Faecal position

Reprints

Finding out why sex differences are true in neurological terms—in other words, how the brain is wired up to create them—is another matter altogether. To play this game you have to have a lot of expensive kit, not just a comfortable chair from which to pontificate. And that is exactly what Ragini Verma of the University of Pennsylvania and her colleagues do have. As a result, as they outline in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they have been able to map out differences in the ways male and female brains are cabled and match them, at least to their own satisfaction, to the stereotypes beloved of both folklore and psychology.

Sugar and spice or puppy-dogs’ tails?

Neurology has been revolutionised over the past couple of decades by a range of techniques that can scan living brains. Dr Verma’s technique of choice is diffusion tensor imaging. This follows water molecules around the brain. Because the fibres that connect nerve cells have fatty sheaths, the water in them can diffuse only along a fibre, not through the sheath. So, diffusion tensor imaging is able to detect bundles of such fibres, and see where they are going.

Dr Verma and her team applied the technique to 428 men and boys, and 521 women and girls. Their results are summarised in the two diagrams above, which show connection trends averaged from the sum of participants’ brains.

The two main parts of a human brain are the cerebrum, above and towards the front, which does the thinking, and the cerebellum, below and towards the back, which does the acting. Each is divided into right and left hemispheres. As the diagrams show, in men (the left-hand picture) the dominant connections in the cerebrum are those, marked in blue, within hemispheres. In women, they are those, marked in orange, between hemispheres. In the cerebellum (not visible because it is under the cerebrum), it is the other way around.

What this means is open to interpretation, but Dr Verma’s take is that the wiring differences underlie some of the variations in male and female cognitive skills. The left and right sides of the cerebrum, in particular, are believed to be specialised for logical and intuitive thought respectively. In her view, the cross-talk between them in women, suggested by the wiring diagrams, helps explain their better memories, social adeptness and ability to multitask, all of which benefit from the hemispheres collaborating. In men, by contrast, within-hemisphere links let them focus on things that do not need complex inputs from both hemispheres. Hence the monomania.

When it comes to the cerebellum, the extra cross-links between hemispheres in men serve to co-ordinate the activity of the whole sub-organ. That is important because each half controls, by itself, only one half of the body. Hence men have better motor abilities—or, in layman’s terms, are better co-ordinated than women.

Dr Verma’s other main finding is that most of these differences are not congenital. Rather, they develop with age. Her volunteers ranged from 8 to 22 years old. The brains of boys and girls aged 8 to 13 demonstrated only a few differences, though all were of the type that later became pronounced. Adolescents, those aged 13 to 17, showed more. Young adults, over 17, more still. Sex differences in brains—those visible to this technique, at least—thus manifest themselves mainly when sex itself begins to matter.

Dr Verma’s work is important not only for what it has shown, but also as a demonstration of the power of diffusion tensor imaging. Studying the brain, particularly the living brain, is a uniquely hard scientific problem. The American government has recently promised to spend serious amounts of money doing so, through what it dubs the BRAIN initiative—the inevitable contrived acronym supposedly standing for Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies.

As that name suggests, advances in brain research depend on the development of better ways of looking at brains while they are alive and firing. This will be hard. But work like Dr Verma’s shows the rewards of doing it.

From the print edition: Science and technology

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Gente normal nao faz impacto no mundo.

Feliz Imposto Velho No Natal e Fim De Ano

Nesse natal e fim de ano (segundo calendario cristao) lembre-se que voce pagara mais ou menos em torno de 80% de impostos nos espumantes.

Pensar que eu ria dos amigos escandinavos quando diziam que havia muito imposto embutido nos precos das bebidas com alcool por la....

Sei do que escrevo porque pago essa coisa. E melhor ainda: O uso que fazem dos impostos. Assunto velho? Sim. Tem solucao? Nao aqui. 

Melhor fazer alcool com pao embolorado e chupar o negocio....

Mais Uma Mafia Do ICMS Pega. Agora Voce Sabe De Onde Vem Milagres?

Deu no claudicante financeiramente falando OESP:

Fraudadores em varios estados de ICMS e ST foram pegos, alguns ja estao foragidos, etc etc. R$ 150,000,000 em evasao, aproximadamente.

Nao tem milagre no mundo financeiro, do comercio: Visivelmente alguns lojistas e distribuidores lesam o fisco e o mercado com os precos que praticam com constancia. Nao tem como vender  um produto abaixo do preco do produtor ou importador se nao for contrabando, roubado, evasao fiscal (contrabando serve como evasao tambem), desespero, dumping ou compra de marketshare (expressao meio em desuso).

Em SP, Capital, ha gente que faz milagres ha muito tempo. As vezes pagam DARFs e ICMS PESADOS como multa. E voce achando que o velhinho da distribuidora era honesto por praticar precos tao mais baixos que outrem.

Nao ha milagre. Ha gente que abusa dos precos e os larapios que em nome de riqueza facil/rapida estao enquadrilhados.

Acorda Ze Ruela. Nao compre nada pirata nem produto roubado/contrabandeado.

Melhores De SP, Veja Edicao Fim De Ano

Boas noticias, e mais do de sempre.

Primeiro a turma que nao se emenda:

Ainda consta muita gente que vende espuma no prato por R$ 90.00, pedacos de arte.... tudo como era no Adria ha 10 anos. Enfiem essa espuma na pia e facam comida.

Quem nao pegou, pegue a nova Veja Melhores 2013 2014. Da para acompanhar a evolucao do mercado. Numero enorme de restaurante tradicional e famoso que fechou as portas. Paginas e paginas de gelaterias (antes eram 4, 5 das boas por toda SP), muita chocolateria (algumas mais caras que uma refeicao, mas sao otimas), mais cafes em pinheiros/vila madalena que mcdonald's em SP toda. Agora hamburguer virou coisa de rico... e me parece que as pessoas estao comecando a ensaiar uma rebeliao contra pizza cara. Por R$ 120.00 vamos pegar um espanhol/portuga/japa/italiano e ainda vem troco

De bom na parte de restaurantes? O surgimento com mais forza da liga dos bons e baratos: Que seja uma tendencia com muito futuro. E que os donos e investidores tenham sucesso tambem.

Mais uma coisa: Os japas que eram muito caros ha 8 anos continuam com o mesmo preco. Realmente nao daria para subir os precos no mesmo passo que a inflacao. Entao hoje um otimo japa por R$ 260.00 no menu confianza esta bem mais palatavel que antes.

Recomendo o kinoshita e o sakamoto. Uma vez por ano da para pagar R$ 300.00 nesses lugares. Valem o custo. Eu ainda prefiro o kinoshita. 

Grandes Mentiras Do Vinho. Dialogos Epicos

Cada dia mais orgulhoso dos enopicaretas.

Da serie ''ainda nao vi tudo em lojas de vinhos'':

P: De que safra eh esse vinho branco? 

Resposta do cara de pau: Esse otimo vinho he um blend de safras. Todas muito boas.

P: Mas o vinho esta novo?

Resposta: Esta otimo, pode leva-lo.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Blend de safras? O ''vinho'' em questao deve ser um blend de aldeidos, compostos inorganicos e metais radioativos.

Leitura De Sabado:

Religiao faz o louco ou o louco cria religiao porque he doido?

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2013/dec/06/muslim-vigilantes-jailed-sharia-law-attacks-london

Fim Do Vinho Ruim?

Um grande artigo, para ler com gosto. Pergunta: vinho natural ruim, mas feito pela natureza ou vinho "bom" feito por computador, maquinas??

http://www.economist.com/news/technology-quarterly/21590767-high-tech-winemaking-technology-has-already-made-poor-plonk-thing-past

Pequenos Vinhos, Grandes Precos

Ay ay ay. Houve uma epoca que eu pensava que esse vinho fosse um dos melhores vinhos do Chile ainda que nao tivesse jamais degustado essa coisa. Somente ouvia dizer que '' ''.

Nao faz muito vi algumas garrafas no caixa do supermercado (pasme) Dia. 

E acabei morrendo em R$ 90.00 por uma garrafa de Marques de Casa Concha Cabernet Sauvignon 2008. Uma mega decepcao pelo preco e pela suposta historia que tem no Brasil. Segundo uma pesquisa de mercado rapida o preco ate que nao estava ruim.

O que? Voce quer ficar multi-bilionario cobrando precos justos pelos seus produtos? Dream on, babe.

Perguntar Ofende: Voce Sabe Definir Com Exatidao O Que He Um Produto Organico?

Aposto que nao. No mundo todo os paises tem definicoes na lei diferentes para os produtos chamados de organico. Porcentagens variam, agrotoxico para ca e para la tambem. 

E essa da semente (ler abaixo). Problema? Nenhum desde que as dosagens e doses sejam respeitadas de acordo com o que manda o fabricante....mas dai o produto ja nao he mais ''organico'' 100%....

http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2013/12/1381025-alimentos-organicos-continuarao-a-poder-ser-produzidos-com-sementes-com-agrotoxicos.shtml


  I'm 100% carbon based life form...therefore organic!!

A Triste Historia Dos Azeites De Oliva Fraudados Continua

So ler aqui. E voce achando que esta colocando saude no seu prato....e da sua familia

http://www.procon.rj.gov.br/index.php/publicacao/detalhar/775

A Importancia Do Trouxa Para O Comercio

Once upon a time eu morei 365 dias exatos numa cidade aprazivel no Bay area. Essa cidade tem uma ponte que he a mais linda do mundo. O nome da cidade fica incognito aqui. Mas foi o melhor ano da minha vida.

Durante os 365 dias havia no Market Street lojas com faixas dizendo ''fechando as portas, liquidacao total''. Blowout sale, going out of business.

Market St he passagem obrigatoria para moradores e muitos turistas. Atraidos pela oportunidade unica na vida de comprar coisas em SFO por preco de ocasiao, milhares de pessoas passavam por ali e deixavam a carteira na compra de coisas inuteis por precos que nao eram exatamente a blowout.

Defendo aqui que o tonto, o trouxa, o comprador sem logica, impulsivo (mulheres e homens) sao muito importantes para o comercio, comunidades locais, governo, etc.

Se todos fossem como eu (racional e conservador na compra, apesar de investir pesado em negocios em relacao ao patrimonio, mas isso he outra coisa) ou se fossem como varios clientes que tenho que so compram galinha morta, vinhos ou produtos REALMENTE com precos muitos bons, estariamos ainda produzindo carros como Ford T preto, somente para a zelite.

Esse cara que eu chamo de enotrouxa cria (transfere) riquezas. Ao comprar um vinho que custou na origem R$ 18.00 (preco nacionalizado, com impostos incluidos) por R$ 120 o cliente esta movendo e acelerando a roda do comercio, eventualmente abrindo empregos e fazendo com que mais impostos vao ao governo. 

Nao haveria comercio de imoveis atualmente se nao houvessse o trouxa (R$ 15,000 o m2??) 

No caso do vinho, para ser mais especifico eu chuto aqui que ha dois tipos de trouxas: Aquele contumaz que jamais vai aprender que aquele ''champagne'' feito no RGS que ele compra por R$ 70.00 he realmente um lixo. Esse nunca vai aprender. Esse vai comprar calca rasgada de R$ 1,200 nas boutiques da Oscar Freire achando que fez um puta negocio.

Mas tambem temos o trouxa passageiro. Pessoas como voce e eu que ja pagaram caro em vinhos asquerosos, mas com um pouco de tempo fomos lendo, conversando e aprendendo sobre a loucura que cometiamos. Hoje somos racionais e chatos para comprar.

Esse cidadao rotulado carinhosamente de ''trouxa'' merece nossa atencao, respeito e admiracao. Obrigado por transferirem a economia muito mais que deveriam. 

Fotos Do Mes

Na boa, um pais com esse numero de jumentos nao pode ir para frente. 3 fotos que definem com quem voce compartilha uma mesma nacionalidade. Chore! 

Leitura De Sabado: MAIS Um Bom Artigo Defendendo Exercicios Leves

The Power of a Daily Bout of Exercise

By GRETCHEN REYNOLDS

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PHYS ED

Gretchen Reynolds on the science of fitness.

This week marks the start of the annual eat-too-much and move-too-little holiday season, with its attendant declining health and surging regrets. But a well-timed new study suggests that a daily bout of exercise should erase or lessen many of the injurious effects, even if you otherwise lounge all day on the couch and load up on pie.

To undertake this valuable experiment, which was published online in The Journal of Physiology, scientists at the University of Bath in England rounded up a group of 26 healthy young men. All exercised regularly. None were obese. Baseline health assessments, including biopsies of fat tissue, confirmed that each had normal metabolisms and blood sugar control, with no symptoms of incipient diabetes.

The scientists then asked their volunteers to impair their laudable health by doing a lot of sitting and gorging themselves.

Energy surplus is the technical name for those occasions when people consume more energy, in the form of calories, than they burn. If unchecked, energy surplus contributes, as we all know, to a variety of poor health outcomes, including insulin resistance — often the first step toward diabetes — and other metabolic problems.

Overeating and inactivity can each, on its own, produce an energy surplus. Together, their ill effects are exacerbated, often in a very short period of time. Earlier studies have found that even a few days of inactivity and overeating spark detrimental changes in previously healthy bodies.

Some of these experiments have also concluded that exercise blunts the ill effects of these behaviors, in large part, it has been assumed, by reducing the energy surplus. It burns some of the excess calories. But a few scientists have suspected that exercise might do more; it might have physiological effects that extend beyond just incinerating surplus energy.

To test that possibility, of course, it would be necessary to maintain an energy surplus, even with exercise. So that is what the University of Bath researchers decided to do.

Their method was simple. They randomly divided their volunteers into two groups, one of which was assigned to run every day at a moderately intense pace on a treadmill for 45 minutes. The other group did not exercise.

Meanwhile, the men in both groups were told to generally stop moving so much, decreasing the number of steps that they took each day from more than 10,000 on average to fewer than 4,000, as gauged by pedometers. The exercising group’s treadmill workouts were not included in their step counts. Except when they were running, they were as inactive as the other group.

Both groups also were directed to start substantially overeating. The group that was not exercising increased their daily caloric intake by 50 percent, compared with what it had been before, while the exercising group consumed almost 75 percent more calories than previously, with the additional 25 percent replacing the energy burned during training.

Over all, the two groups’ net daily energy surplus was the same.

The experiment continued for seven days. Then both groups returned to the lab for additional testing, including new insulin measurements and another biopsy of fat tissue.

The results were striking. After only a week, the young men who had not exercised displayed a significant and unhealthy decline in their blood sugar control, and, equally worrying, their biopsied fat cells seemed to have developed a malicious streak. Those cells, examined using sophisticated genetic testing techniques, were now overexpressing various genes that may contribute to unhealthy metabolic changes and underexpressing other genes potentially important for a well-functioning metabolism.

But the volunteers who had exercised once a day, despite comparable energy surpluses, were not similarly afflicted. Their blood sugar control remained robust, and their fat cells exhibited far fewer of the potentially undesirable alterations in gene expression than among the sedentary men.

“Exercise seemed to completely cancel out many of the changes induced by overfeeding and reduced activity,” said Dylan Thompson, a professor of health sciences at the University of Bath and senior author of the study. And where it did not countermand the impacts, he continued, it “softened” them, leaving the exercise group “better off than the nonexercise group,” despite engaging in equivalently insalubrious behavior.

From a scientific standpoint, this finding intimates that the metabolic effects of overeating and inactivity are multifaceted, Dr. Thompson said, with an energy surplus sparking genetic as well as other physiological changes. But just how exercise countermands those effects is impossible to say based on the new experiment, he added. Differences in how each group’s metabolism utilized fats and carbohydrates could play a role, he said, as could the release of certain molecules from exercising muscles, which only occurred among the men who ran.

Of more pressing interest, though, is the study’s practical message that “if you are facing a period of overconsumption and inactivity” — also known as the holidays — “a daily bout of exercise will prevent many of the negative changes, at least in the short term,” Dr. Thompson said. Of course, his study involved young, fit men and a relatively prolonged period of exercise. But the findings likely apply, he said, to other groups, like older adults and women, and perhaps to lesser amounts of training. That’s a possibility worth embracing as the pie servings accumulate.

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Se estivesse pescando hoje em Minas a beira do rio grande das aguas cristalinas poderia parar para ouvir esse disco.

It was 40 years ago today....

Pensamentos Aleatorios: Modos De Gerenciamento De Empresas No Mundo

Europa Latina: dono pobre, empresa pobre;
Europa Superior: dono pobre, empresa rica;
USA: dono rico, empresa rica;
Brasil: dono rico, empresa pobre

Management styles.....

Oba, Deu BRAZIL ZIL ZIL No NYTIMES

Infelizmente pelos mesmos motivos de sempre....

November 26, 2013

Brazil Is Entranced by a Tale of Love, Taxes and Bribery

By SIMON ROMERO

RIO DE JANEIRO — There were the boxes of Cuban cigars, which cost about $500 each at a shop in Vila Nova Conceição, one of the most exclusive districts of São Paulo, and the $2,260 bottles of Vega Sicilia Único, a legendary Spanish red. Throw in a Porsche Cayenne, speedboat jaunts to tropical islands and all-night soirees with high-end escorts, and what do you get?

The unlikely lifestyle of a Brazilian tax inspector.

In one of the most salacious corruption scandals to captivate Brazil in years, the municipal government of São Paulo, the nation’s largest city, is reeling from revelations of a scheme in which investigators claim that a group of tax inspectors allowed construction companies to evade more than $200 million in taxes in exchange for bribes.

“We always had marvelous dinners, excellent trips by private plane to Angra dos Reis,” Vanessa Alcântara, 27, the former companion of one of the inspectors charged with accepting bribes, said in a televised interview, referring to the oceanfront city that is a playground for Brazil’s elite.

The titillating details of the scandal are emerging as an offshoot of a custody battle between Ms. Alcântara and Luis Alexandre Cardoso de Magalhães, 41, a low-ranking São Paulo official. Brazilians are absorbing their confessions and accusations against one another, some of which have been nationally televised, in a case that underlines how political corruption remains entrenched despite landmark efforts to send corrupt officials to jail.

So far, the scandal has tinged the administration of São Paulo’s current mayor, Fernando Haddad, and of his predecessor, Gilberto Kassab. Investigators say the bribes to Mr. Magalhães and his colleagues were largely used to gain approval for real estate projects.

A top aide to Mr. Haddad, Antonio Donato, resigned after tax inspectors implicated in the scheme told prosecutors that some of the bribes were channeled to Mr. Donato when he was a city councilman. Mr. Donato denied that claim on Tuesday, and Mr. Haddad said in a statement that his administration put an end to the inspectors’ actions shortly after he took office this year.

Intercepts of phone calls by Mr. Magalhães suggest that he met Ms. Alcântara in 2011 at Bamboa, a São Paulo nightclub frequented by prostitutes. She disputes that account, which Mr. Magalhães repeated over the weekend on the Globo television network, contending that they met when she tried to sell him a cellphone plan.

But when it comes to living high from ill-gotten gains, the estranged couple seem to agree on a lot of things.

Mr. Magalhães, who chose to cooperate with investigators after his arrest in October, described how developers delivered bags of cash, some containing about $30,000, on a weekly basis to his office. The money was then divided among four municipal officials, he said, recounting how he burned through much of his haul by spending more than $4,500 a night on prostitutes.

“I spent because the money was coming in,” he said. “I wanted to live.”

In telephone intercepts and newspaper interviews, Ms. Alcântara said she and Mr. Magalhães, who had a child together, would count the money in her living room, on occasion finding more than $180,000 on their hands. Prosecutors estimate his fortune at $8 million, an amount difficult to reconcile with his annual salary of about $82,000.

Ms. Alcântara said he used some of the money to decorate her apartment at a cost of $50,000, and local newspapers have reported that they would splurge on $2,200-a-night suites at a designer hotel and meals at steakhouses with $380 bottles of Charmes-Chambertin Grand Cru, a coveted French wine.

The high life apparently ended when Ms. Alcântara became enraged over what she saw as the meager monthly child support Mr. Magalhães offered her after they separated, prompting her to talk to prosecutors.

As is sometimes the case in the cycle of Brazilian corruption scandals, celebrities can emerge from such intrigue.

One aspirant to such status is Nagila Coelho, 38, a personal trainer who is now a romantic companion of Mr. Magalhães. She is planning to start her own line of bikinis, according to a report in Folha de São Paulo, a Brazilian newspaper. Ms. Alcântara, meanwhile, is mulling a venture into politics.

She said she already had a slogan: “Being a thief is easy; I’ll be honest amid all the thieves.”

Bordeaux: A Enganacao Continua, Mas Ha Boas Noticias

Do departamento de artigos requentados...(algumas coisas nao mudam mesmo).

Para quem nao sabe importo, degusto, compro, olho vinhos. Alguns por vezes sao de Bordeaux. 

Continua sendo um misterio como os franceses conseguem vender algo com um preco muito superior ao que vale. Seria somente oferta x procura? Ou aquele rotulo bonito colocado num vinho de € 2.50 justifica a compra e a venda? 

Importei alguns rotulos e se comparar preco com preco quase todos apanham dos vinhos de outros paises. Os otimos bordeaux? Carissimos. Os bons bordeaux? Tambem muito caros. Os bordeaux de entrada? No oceano de milhoes de garrafas ha poucas boas alternativas.

Abaixo de R$ 50.00 vira um reality show de horrores. Compensa (depois lavo a boca com sabao) comprar um vinho chileno por  R$ 50.00.

A boa noticia? Ha poucos, mas muito bons Bordeaux blanc! no mercado. Bem melhores que muita bomba da america do sul pela mesma faixa de preco. Pesquise Bordeaux Blanc que acha coisa boa no mar da vida.

Para os iniciantes: Rhone, Loire e outras oferecem boas opcoes.

F-1 E O Transito Em SP

Do departamento de pessoas ignorantes, com agencias:

Mais uma vez o transito em direcao (e na saida) de Interlagos estava caotico. De motoristas de Corcel II 1976 ate Porsche SUV todos acham que precisam ir de carro ao autodromo. Nao ha alternativas.

Na internet as reclamacoes foram as mesmas, cidade imbecil, prefeito isso, governador aquilo, pais de quinto mundo, etc.

Tsk tsk. O trem vai vazio para Interlagos, limpo por dentro e com A/C funcionando. 

Os pobres e os ricos no Brasil padecem do mesmo mal: Burrice aguda incuravel.

Eles gostam disso...

Bom E Barato: Comidas

Restaurante Chiado. La na decadente e cara Moema. Todos sabem quem sao os donos, etc etc.  Bom portuga por um preco razoavel, ao menos se comparado os precos que so imbecis pagam por aqui. 

Atendimento muito bom; zero de estacionamento. Prepare-se para pagar R$ 15.00 pelo tal de valet.  Absurdo cotidiano em SP.

Na PF jamais pagaria isso, mas foi no corporativo.

Vale a pena uma visita. BBB.

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Sao Paulo com cara de SP dos anos 70.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3znOTuT4K8

Dica Cultural: Biografia Semi-Autorizada

Talvez nem tanto cultural...mas vamos la: Em tempos de F-1 no Brasil estou lendo um delicioso livro sobre um carinha que tem alguns cru cru na carteira.

Bernard Ecclestone.

Descobri que tenho algumas coisas em comum com o bilionario londrino: Pavor de desperdicio e amor por dinheiro acima de tudo. 

So falta ser sabio/sabido como ele e viver mais 400 anos para chegar perto da fortuna do cara.

Para os bem entendidos o livro apresenta algumas falhas... mas nada que comprometa o importante: saber o que he, de onde vem essa pessoa. 

Comparo Bernie com os picaretas do vinho, dos restaurantes, das lojas. Gente que perde reputacao, nome, honra por R$ 5,000. Oh gawd.....

Baratinho no kindle. Nao sei se ha em portugues.

http://www.amazon.com/No-Angel-Secret-Bernie-Ecclestone/dp/0571269362

Perguntar Nao Ofende: O Milagre Do Panettone De Natal

Voce ja reparou quanto tempo dura aberto um panettone caseiro e um desses de supermercado? Eu tambem.

Nem os vermes vao comer essa geracao atual de gourmets.

Humanos? No, thanks.

Quebra-Quebra News

Sera a culpa somente da pizza de R$ 90.00? 

Mais uma pizzaria grande manda embora 30% do staff. Pizzaria capa de revista...famosa.... daquelas com pianista tocando toda a noite....

Decidem mandar gente embora a corrigir precos dos produtos, dos vinhos, do ponto de onde estao. 

Muitos ainda nao viram que a solucao passa por outros pontos. Cortar staff he agua com acucar. O buraco de longo prazo esta em outro lugar.

Leitura De Sabado: Sobre Bem x Mal

Sam Harris (opa, alguem o conhece ai?) nessa otima entrevista. Boa leitura

The Roots of Good and Evil

An Interview with Paul Bloom

Paul Bloom is the Brooks and Suzanne Ragen Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is a past president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and a co-editor of Behavioral and Brain Sciences, one of the major journals in the field. Dr. Bloom has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, The Guardian, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic. He is the author or editor of six books, including Just Babies: The Origins of Good and Evil.

Paul was kind enough to answer a few questions about his new book.

*  *  *

Harris: What are the greatest misconceptions people have about the origins of morality?

Bloom: The most common misconception is that morality is a human invention. It’s like agriculture and writing, something that humans invented at some point in history. From this perspective, babies start off as entirely self-interested beings—little psychopaths—and only gradually come to appreciate, through exposure to parents and schools and church and television, moral notions such as the wrongness of harming another person.

Now, this perspective is not entirely wrong. Certainly some morality is learned; this has to be the case because moral ideals differ across societies. Nobody is born with the belief that sexism is wrong (a moral belief that you and I share) or that blasphemy should be punished by death (a moral belief that you and I reject). Such views are the product of culture and society. They aren’t in the genes.

But the argument I make in Just Babies is that there also exist hardwired moral universals—moral principles that we all possess. And even those aspects of morality—such as the evils of sexism—that vary across cultures are ultimately grounded in these moral foundations.

A very different misconception sometimes arises, often stemming from a religious or spiritual outlook. It’s that we start off as Noble Savages, as fundamentally good and moral beings. From this perspective, society and government and culture are corrupting influences, blotting out and overriding our natural and innate kindness.

This, too, is mistaken. We do have a moral core, but it is limited—Hobbes was closer to the truth than Rousseau. Relative to an adult, your typical toddler is selfish, parochial, and bigoted. I like the way Kingsley Amis once put it: “It was no wonder that people were so horrible when they started life as children.” Morality begins with the genes, but it doesn’t end there.

Harris: How do you distinguish between the contributions of biology and those of culture?

Bloom: There is a lot you can learn about the mind from studying the fruit flies of psychological research—college undergraduates. But if you want to disentangle biology and culture, you need to look at other populations. One obvious direction is to study individuals from diverse cultures. If it turns out that some behavior or inclination shows up only in so-called WEIRD (Western Educated Industrial Rich Democratic) societies, it’s unlikely to be a biological adaptation. For instance, a few years ago researchers were captivated by the fact that subjects in the United States and Switzerland are highly altruistic and highly moral when playing economic games. They assumed that this reflects the workings of some sort of evolved module—only to discover that people in the rest of the world behave quite differently, and that their initial findings are better explained as a quirk of certain modern societies.

One can do comparative research—if a human capacity is shared with other apes, then its origin is best explained in terms of biology, not culture. And there’s a lot of fascinating research with apes and monkeys that’s designed to address questions about the origin of pro-social behavior.

Then there’s baby research. We can learn a lot about human nature by looking at individuals before they are exposed to school, television, religious institutions, and the like. The powerful capacities that we and other researchers find in babies are strong evidence for the contribution of biology. Now, even babies have some life history, and it’s possible that very early experience, perhaps even in the womb, plays some role in the origin of these capacities. I’m comfortable with this—my claim in Just Babies isn’t that the moral capacities of babies emerge without anyinteraction with the environment. That would be nuts. Rather, my claim is the standard nativist one: These moral capacities are not acquired through learning.

We should also keep in mind that failure to find some capacity in a baby does not show that it is the product of culture. For one thing, the capacity might be present in the baby’s mind but psychologists might not be clever enough to detect it. In the immortal words of Donald Rumsfeld, “Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.” Furthermore, some psychological systems that are pretty plainly biological adaptations might emerge late in development—think about the onset of disgust at roughly the age of four, or the powerful sexual desires that emerge around the time of puberty. Developmental research is a useful tool for pulling apart biology and culture, but it’s not a magic bullet.

Harris: What are the implications of our discovering that many moral norms emerge very early in life?

Bloom: Some people think that once we know what the innate moral system is, we’ll know how to live our lives. For them it’s as if the baby’s mind contains a holy text of moral wisdom, written by Darwin instead of Yahweh, and once we can read it, all ethical problems will be solved.

This seems unlikely. Mature moral decision-making involves complex reasoning, and often the right thing to do involves overriding our gut feelings, including those that are hardwired. And some moral insights, such as the wrongness of slavery, are surely not in our genes.

But I do think that this developmental work has some interesting implications. For one thing, the argument in Just Babies is that, to a great extent, all people have the same morality. The differences that we see—however important they are to our everyday lives—are variations on a theme. This universality provides some reason for optimism. It suggests that if we look hard enough, we can find common ground with any other neurologically normal human, and that has to be good news.

Just Babies is optimistic in another way. The zeitgeist in modern psychology is pro-emotion and anti-reason. Prominent writers and intellectuals such as David Brooks, Malcolm Gladwell, and Jonathan Haidt have championed the view that, as David Hume famously put it, we are slaves of the passions. From this perspective, moral judgments and moral actions are driven mostly by gut feelings—rational thought has little to do with it.

That’s a grim view of human nature. If it were true, we should buck up and learn to live with it. But I argue in Just Babies that it’s not true. It is refuted by everyday experience, by history, and by the science of developmental psychology. Rational deliberation is part of our everyday lives, and, as many have argued—including Steven Pinker, Peter Singer, Joshua Greene, you, and me, in the final chapter of in Just Babies—it is a powerful force in driving moral progress.

Harris: When you talk about moral progress, it implies that some moralities are better than others. Do you think, then, that it is legitimate to say that certain individuals or cultures have the wrong morality?

Bloom: If humans were infinitely plastic, with no universal desires, goals, or moral principles, the answer would have to be no. But it turns out that we have deep commonalities, and so, yes, we can talk meaningfully about some moralities’ being better than others.

Consider a culture in which some minority is kept as slaves—tortured, raped, abused, bought and sold, and so on—and this practice is thought of by the majority as a moral arrangement. Perhaps it’s justified by reference to divine command, or the demands of respected authorities, or long-standing tradition. I think we’re entirely justified in arguing that they are wrong, and when we do this, we’re not merely saying “We like our way better.” Rather, we can argue that it’s wrong by pointing out that it’s wrong even for them—the majority who benefit from the practice.

Obstetricians used to deliver babies without washing their hands, and many mothers and babies died as a result. They were doing it wrong—wrong by their own standards, because obstetricians wanted to deliver babies, not kill them. Similarly, given that the humans in the slave society possess certain values and intuitions and priorities, they are acting immorally by their own lights, and they would appreciate this if they were exposed to certain arguments and certain facts.

Now, this is an empirical claim, drawing on assumptions about human psychology, but it’s supported by history. Good moral ideas can spread through the world in much the same way that good scientific ideas can, and once they are established, people marvel that they could ever have thought differently. Americans are no more likely to reinstate slavery than we are to give up on hand-washing for doctors.

You’ve written extensively on these issues in The Moral Landscape and elsewhere, and since we agree on so much, I can’t resist sounding a note of gentle conflict. Your argument is that morality is about maximizing the well-being of conscious minds. This means that determining the best moral system reduces to the empirical/scientific question of what system best succeeds at this goal. From this standpoint, we can reject a slave society for precisely the same reason we can reject a dirty-handed-obstetrician society—it involves needless human pain.

My view is slightly different. You’re certainly right that maximizing well-being is something we value, and needless suffering is plainly a bad thing. But there remain a lot of hard questions—the sort that show up in Ethics 101 and never go away. Are we aspiring for the maximum total amount of individual well-being or the highest average? Are principles of fairness and equality relevant? What if the slave society has very few unhappy slaves and very many happy slaveholders, so its citizens are, in total and on average, more fulfilled than ours? Is that society more moral? If my child needs an operation to save his sight, am I a better person if I let him go blind and send the money to a charity where it will save another child’s life? These are hard questions, and they don’t go away if we have a complete understanding of the empirical facts.

The source of these difficulties, I think, is that as reflective moral beings, we sometimes have conflicting intuitions as to what counts as morally good. If we were natural-born utilitarians of the Benthamite sort, then determining the best possible moral world really would be a straightforward empirical problem. But we aren’t, and so it isn’t.

Harris: Well, it won’t surprise you to learn that I agree with everything you’ve said up until this last bit. In fact, these last points illustrate why I choose not to follow the traditional lines laid down by academic philosophers. If you declare that you are a “utilitarian,” everyone who has taken Ethics 101, as you say, imagines that he understands the limits of your view. Unfortunately, those limits have been introduced by philosophers themselves and are enshrined in the way that we have been encouraged to talk about moral philosophy.

For instance, you suggest that a concern for well-being might be opposed to a concern for fairness and equality—but fairness and equality are immensely important precisely because they are so good at safeguarding the well-being of people who have competing interests. If someone says that fairness and equality are important for reasons that have nothing to do with the well-being of people, I have no idea what he is talking about.

Similarly, you suggest that the hard questions of ethics wouldn’t go away if we had a complete understanding of empirical facts. But we really must pause to appreciate just how unimaginably different things would be IF we had such an understanding. This kind of omniscience is probably impossible—but nothing in my account depends on its being possible in practice. All we need to establish a strong, scientific conception of moral truth in principle is to admit that there is a landscape of experiences that conscious beings like ourselves can have, both individually and collectively—and that some are better than others (in any and every sense of “better”). Must we really defend the proposition that an experience of effortless good humor, serenity, love, creativity, and awe spread over all possible minds would be better than everyone’s being flayed alive in a dungeon by unhappy devils? I don’t think so.

I agree that how we think about collective well-being presents certain difficulties (average vs. maximum, for instance)—but a strong conception of moral truth requires only that we acknowledge the extremes. It seems to me that the paradoxes that Derek Parfit has engineered here, while ingenious, need no more impede our progress toward increased well-being than the paradoxes of Zeno prevent us from getting to the coffee pot each morning. I admit that it can be difficult to say whether a society of unhappy egalitarians would be better or worse than one composed of happy slaveholders and none-too-miserable slaves. And if we tuned things just right, I would be forced to say that these societies are morally equivalent. However, one thing is not debatable (and it is all that my thesis as presented in The Moral Landscape requires): If you took either of these societies and increased the well-being of everyone, you would be making a change for the good. If, for instance, the slaveholders invented machines that could replace the drudgery of slaves, and the slaves themselves became happy machine owners—and these changes introduced no negative consequences that canceled the moral gains—this would be an improvement in moral terms. And any person who later attempted to destroy the machines and begin enslaving his neighbors would be acting immorally.

Again, the changes in well-being that are possible for creatures like ourselves are possible whether or not anyone knows about them, and their possibility depends in some way on the laws that govern the states of conscious minds in this universe (or any other).

Whatever its roots in our biology, I think we should now view morality as a navigation problem: How can we (or any other conscious system) reduce suffering and increase happiness? There might be an uncountable number of morally equivalent peaks and valleys on the landscape—but that wouldn’t undermine the claim that basking on some peak is better than being tortured in one of the valleys. Nor would it suggest that movement up or down depends on something other than the laws of nature.

Bloom: I agree with almost all of this. Sure—needless suffering is a bad thing, and increased well-being is a good thing, and that’s why I’m comfortable saying that some societies (and some individuals) have better moralities than others. I agree as well that determining the right moral system will rest in part on knowing the facts. This is true for the extremes, and it’s also true for real-world cases. The morality of drug laws in the United States, for instance, surely has a lot to do with whether those laws cause an increase or a decrease in human suffering.

My point was that there are certain moral problems that don’t seem to be solvable by science. You accept this but think that these are like paradoxes of metaphysics—philosophical puzzles with little practical relevance.

This is where we clash, because some of these moral problems keep me up at night. Take the problem of how much I should favor my own children. I spend money to improve my sons’ well-being—buying them books, taking them on vacations, paying dentists to fix their teeth, etc.—that could instead be used to save the lives of children in poor countries. I don’t need a neuroscientist to tell me that I’m not acting to increase the total well-being of conscious individuals. Am I doing wrong? Maybe so. But would you recommend the alternative, where (to use my earlier example) I let my son go blind so that I can send the money I would have paid for the operation to Oxfam so that another child can live? This seems grotesque. So what’s the right balance? How should we weigh the bonds of family, friendship, and community?

This is a serious problem of everyday life, and it’s not going to be solved by science. 

Harris: Actually, I don’t think our views differ much. This just happens to be a place where we need to distinguish between answers in practice and answers in principle. I completely agree that there are important ethical problems that we might never solve. I also agree that there are circumstances in which we tend to act selfishly to a degree that beggars any conceivable philosophical justification. We are, therefore, not as moral as we might be. Is this really a surprise? As you know, the forces that rule us here are largely situational: It is one thing for you to toss an appeal from the Red Cross in the trash on your way to the ice cream store. It would be another for you to step over the prostrate bodies of starving children. You know such children exist, of course, and yet they are out of sight and (generally) out of mind. Few people would counsel you to let your own children go blind, but I can well imagine Peter Singer’s saying that you should deprive them of every luxury as long as other children are deprived of food. To understand the consequences of doing this, we would really need to take all the consequences into account. 

I briefly discuss this problem in The Moral Landscape. I suspect that some degree of bias toward one’s own offspring could be normative in that it will tend to lead to better outcomes for everyone. Communism, many have noticed, appears to run so counter to human nature as to be more or less unworkable. But the crucial point is that we could be wrong about this—and we would be wrong with reference to empirical facts that we may never fully discover. To say that these answers will not be found through science is merely to say that they won’t be established with any degree of certainty or precision. But that is not to say that such answers do not exist. It is also possible to know exactly what we should do but to not be sufficiently motivated to do it. We often find ourselves in this situation in life. For example, a person desperately wants to lose weight and knows that he would be happier if he did. He also knows how to do it—by eating less junk and exercising more. And yet he may spend his whole life not doing what he knows would be good for him. In many respects, I think our morality suffers from this kind of lassitude.

But we can achieve something approaching moral certainty for the easy cases. As you know, many academics and intellectuals deny this. You and I are surrounded by highly educated and otherwise intelligent people who believe that opposition to the burqa is merely a symptom of Western provincialism. I think we agree that this kind of moral relativism rests on some very dubious (and unacknowledged) assumptions about the nature of morality and the limits of science. Let us go out on a scientific limb together: Forcing half the population to live inside cloth bags isn’t the best way to maximize individual or collective well-being. On the surface, this is a rather modest ethical claim. When we look at the details, however, we find that it is really a patchwork of claims about psychology, sociology, economics, and probably several other scientific disciplines. In fact, the moment we admit that we know anything at all about human well-being, we find that we cannot talk about moral truth outside the context of science. Granted, the scientific details may be merely implicit, or may remain perpetually out of reach. But we are talking about the nature of human minds all the same.

Bloom: We still have more to talk about regarding the hard cases, but I agree with you that there are moral truths and that we can learn about them, at least in part, through science. Part of the program of doing so is understanding human nature, and especially our universal moral sense, and this is what my research, and my new book, is all about.

- See more at: http://www.samharris.org/blog/item/the-roots-of-good-and-evil#sthash.mMSGVy0Z.dpuf