Friday, January 18, 2013

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Classico.

Pensamentos Aleatorios: Escritorio de Contabilidade

-- contabilidade, Assessoria de:

1) Escritorio que te suga um mega dinheiro todo mes, mas antes de assinar o contrato de prestacao de servicos promete consultoria contabil, uma analise financeira completa da empresa e dos negocios no minimo anualmente e outras coisas mais.

2) Sempre que ligar para eles para perguntar algo sempre dirao "Nao sei, preciso averiguar" ou " Talvez a Maria saiba, mas esta em horario de almoco, ela liga assim que chegar".

Mais inuteis somente os escritorios de assessoria informatica...mas essa fica para uma proxima.

Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Vale Dos Vinhedos Como "Melhores Destinos Dos Vinhos E Viagens Em 2013". WTF???

Pronto. Mais uma revista fala que o Vale dos Vinhedos esta entre os 10 melhores lugares produtores de vinhos que merecem uma visita em 2013.

O link esta aqui http://www.winemag.com/Wine-Enthusiast-Magazine/Best-Of-Year-2012/10-Best-Wine-Travel-Destinations-2013/

Ficaram loucos ou sao ignorantes ou puxa-saco os que pensam que a Serra Gaucha tem qualidades visuais que batem ou empatam com as regioes vinicolas do mundo todo??

Ha paisagens belissimas no Brasil e nem mesmo a chatice dos politicos, a violencia diaria, a corrupcao, e o custo de vida surreal tiram o merito desses lugares, mas... para mim a revista quis fazer media com todas as regioes possiveis que coubessem de 1 a 10 (ha exemplos tontos na lista tambem)

Nao da para comparar as mil e umas regioes produtoras em New Zealand, Italia, Espanha, Portugal (douro), Slovenia, Croacia, Oregon, California, Argentina, Chile, Africa do Sul, Australia com qualquer serra daqui. Menas, turma, menas....

Nem tao bom quanto dizem, nem tao ruim.

Atualizacao: Mocada, pelo amor de Anita Garibaldi, Neguinho do Pastoreio ou qualquer outro santo gaucho: Estou falando claramente no artigo que a serra nao merece um top 10 em relacao aos outros destinos (milhares) que existem por ai (para nao falar que a revista nao sabe onde fica a serra e o rio de janeiro). Tudo questao de comparacao. Ninguem aqui (eu) falou que o lugar nao presta. Ja fui la e ja me diverti. Bonito, so isso. Nao tenho planos para voltar. Assim como nao volto a muitos outros lugares (dentro e fora do pais). E valeu pelas muitas opinioes. Todas. Ponto final.

Realmente o Adriatico perde em beleza para qualquer corrego por ai. So ir ate la e conferir....

Monday, January 14, 2013

Grandes!! Cervejas, Pequenos Precos. Wals Quadruppel

Essa é para se tirar o chapeu e algo mais. Um torpedo de MG feita pela cervejaria Wals. Nao conhecia e me rendi a uma deles: Wals Quadruppel.

Fans de boas cervejas: voces tem obrigacao de comprar essa cerveja. Mais uma que se for comparada a varias europeias e americanas encara, e bem, qualquer uma de faixas de precos superiores.

Densa, profunda, complexa, longo final, licorosa. Nao sou especialista em cervejas, mas sei reconhecer algo bom. Essa é otima. Do tipo belgian strong ale.

Paguei ridiculos R$ 10.98 (tambem conhecidos como R$ 11.00) num hortifruti em SP, Kapital por 375ml. E sao mais que suficientes. Voce que esta tomando uma "premium" por R$ 2.50, apresse sua transicao. Va logo para o que interessa.

http://www.wals.com.br/cervejas/view/6

Ela merece sua atencao. E nao precisa ter pressa de toma-la no verao. A temperatura dela ideal fica longe dos 0 C..

Recomendo fortemente que usem a taca correta para esse estilo de cerveja. Uma taca de vinho branco ou ate mesmo bordeaux deve dar conta dessa cerveja. Quando em duvida eu uso o website www.brejas.com.br e la ha dicas de qual taca usar para cada cerveja.

Brasil nao é e nao creio que sera o pais do vinho...mas a cerveja nacional ja é uma mega boa realidade.

Update: Li que a cervejaria ganhou o premio como a melhor da sudamerica. Legal, estou bem de paladar. Me falaram que qualquer uma feita por eles é um show.

Para quem chega de ultima hora no blog fica o aviso: Nao sou amante de ninguem na cervejaria, nem me pagaram para publicar isso. Favor acostumar com a ideia.

Saturday, January 12, 2013

Dica Cultural: Leitura De Sabado: Carta Pero Vaz Caminha

Para os que estao com tempo e nao conheciam a tal carta. No final ha uma surpresa.... o cara pede um favor em nome do genro. Puxa saco do rei a carta toda para pedir uma boquinha.

E voce nao sabe do porque esse pais ser o que e'?? Essa sim, heranca maldita.

Leia a carta aqui:

http://educaterra.terra.com.br/voltaire/500br/carta_caminha.htm

PS: No portugues original fica impossivel le-la. Como a lingua de Cabral mudou....

Friday, January 11, 2013

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Do outrora great show Californication.

Thursday, January 10, 2013

Passeios Legais: Museu Cafe Em Santos

Antes da reportagem de hoje do Estadao (mais abaixo) algumas ressalvas:

O cafe do museu servido e feito la nao e' grande coisa. Compre-o e faca-o em casa, se souber. O grao e' muito bom, mas eles perdem a mao na maquina de espresso.
O museu e' bem pobre em historia. Ja falei sobre isso aqui. SE estiver em Santos, va ate la. Mas nao vale o tempo sair de Sao Vicente para ir ate la, quanto mais de SP, RJ, PR....

Agora a a reportagem (com crase):

http://blogs.estadao.com.br/de-grao-em-grao/um-doce-grao-na-areia/

Um doce grão na areia

Talvez você possa beber um dos seus melhores expressos de 2013 antes mesmo do fim de janeiro, durante as férias de verão. É no litoral paulista, em Santos, que está o Museu do Café, referência no preparo da bebida.

Instalada no centro da cidade, está o bem-conservado prédio de dois andares, erguido há noventa anos, que serviu de sede para a Bolsa do Café. Hoje, além do museu, funcionam no espaço, tombado pelo Instituto do Patrimônio Histórico Artístico e Nacional (Iphan), um Centro de Documentação, o Centro de Preparação do Café e a Cafeteria do Museu, na qual desfilam grãos de todo o país em forma de expresso.

FOTOS: Cynthia Almeida Rosa/Estadão

Hoje o De Grão em Grão desce a serra e convida você a fazer o mesmo. Tudo por um bom cafezinho nas férias.

Primeira parada: praia
Pé na areia, numa barraca de praia, dá para experimentar café de excelência à beira-mar. Até 30 de janeiro, uma tenda no Gonzaga abriga o projeto ‘Museu do Café vai à praia’. No espaço, cujas atividades são gratuitas, o público participa de oficinas, de degustações e pode ver objetos do acervo. A programação ocorre de terça a domingo, das 10h às 17h30.

Hoje, 10, e nos dias 17 e 24 de janeiro, às 17h, há edições da oficina ‘Dicas de preparo de um bom café’. No sábado, 12, e também no dia 19 de janeiro, tem degustação de cafés e drinques gelados, no mesmo horário.

Café com história
Para completar o passeio, siga até o museu. No térreo, é possível ver o salão nobre do pregão e duas reproduções de telas de Benedicto Calixto – as originais estão em processo de restauro. Repare ainda nos vitrais da claraboia, também assinados por Calixto, nos utensílios antigos para moagem e torra e nos móveis que pertenceram a escritórios de exportação. O passeio consegue mostrar de forma didática a importância do grão na economia e na cultura do país – monitores estão à disposição para explicar o conteúdo das salas.

No prédio funcionam ainda o Centro de Preparação do Café, com cursos de formação de baristas (leia mais aqui), e um centro de documentação, que merece atenção. É possível encontrar alguma bibliografia sobre café, periódicos estrangeiros e documentos dos séculos XIX e XX ligados à cafeicultura. Basta pedir as pastas às atendentes, sem necessidade de agendar, para se ter acesso a registros de compra e venda de sacas. Vale vasculhar o acervo para saber dos detalhes que envolveram a construção da sede. Boletos de pagamento, escrituras e até apólices de seguro do período estão preservados.

Até março, outra atração é a mostra que marca os 90 anos do edifício. Fotógrafos e artistas plásticos prestam sua homenagem ao Museu. A designer Marcia Okida propõe uma instalação interativa: post-its e canetas ficam à disposição para que os visitantes deixem mensagens. Depois, é só colar no mural ‘Post-Coffee-it’. Ela também os convida a postar imagens em umapágina no Facebook.

Post-Coffee-It

Só mais uma dose
Ao lado da entrada, a Cafeteria do Museu merece uma visita. Uma pena que só sirva expressos (R$ 3,50) e não se dedique a outros métodos de extração, mas os diferentes grãos recompensam. Escolhe-se entre os blends Cerrado de Minas, Sul de Minas, Alta Mogiana, Chapadão do Ferro (Patrocínio, MG) e Jacu Bird Coffee (este por R$ 19 a xícara). Eles estão à venda também torrados, para levar a granel, em grão ou moído (R$ 48 a R$ 130 o quilo; R$ 165 por 250 g do Jacu Bird Coffee).

No dia da visita do De Grão em Grão, provamos um bem-tirado expresso Chapadão do Ferro, encorpado, com aroma de caramelo e chocolate amargo, acidez equilibrada e finalização longa. Na carta estão também drinques. O vienense combina sorvete de creme, licor de chocolate, expresso, creme de leite e chantilly por R$ 16. Há quem se arrisque ainda com a caipirinha de limão incrementada com cubos de gelo de café (R$ 18).

Museu do Café. Rua XV de Novembro, 95, Centro, Santos – SP. (13) 3213-1750. 9h/17h (dom. a partir das 10h; fecha 2ª). Cafeteria (térreo): 9h/18h (dom. a partir das 10h; fecha 2ª). Entrada: R$ 5.

Grandes Momentos Promocao Pega Ratao

Quase tao boa quanto a do bag in box de R$ 55.00 por R$ 55.00. Classico instantaneo.

Champagne Francesa (SIC) Veuve Clicquot Fridge Brut Rose 750ml

de ~~R$299,00~~
por R$298,00
economize R$1,00

No Cartão (R$)
Número de Parcelas	Valor da Parcela	Número de Parcelas	Valor da Parcela
1X sem juros	298,00	3X sem juros	99,33
2X sem juros	149,00

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Pequenos Vinhos, Grandes Preços

Verao. Epoca de calor, sol, cerveja, sucos, vinho branco e vinho tinto muito leve. Tendo isso em mente recentemente degustei alguns pinot noirs.

O vinho premiado do dia teve um bom cidadao pegou uma pinot noir do ótimo valle de casablanca (Chile) e extraiu tudo que podia e nao podia da uva. Ultra concentracao de elementos e acucar.

Cartagena, da Casa Marin.

Resultado: Pinot escuro, denso, compacto, 15º de alcool. Para que fazer uma coisa dessas com a mais elegante das uvas? Certamente ha muita gente que toma pinot noir assim. Se esta bom para a vinicola, que siga o bonde.

Ao menos os 15% de alcool estavam bem integrados ao vinho. "Somente" 15% de alcool.

Por ultimo veio a flechada final da minha decepcao: Uma persistencia bem curta. Para mim o grande pecado que nenhum vinho/cafe/cerveja/azeite pode ter.

Esperava bem mais pela recomendacao e por R$ 80.00.

Perguntar Nao Ofende: Sorvetes

Voce se lembra quando de uma ida a sorveteria levava 15 segundos para escolher entre creme, flocos, morango e no maximo coco e gastava uns R$ 1.50 para comer 4 bolas (hoje se diz scoop)?

Hoje uma ida a uma gelatteria se chama "experiencia" e ha opcoes de sabores que vao do cacau do himalaia ate limao dos apeninos. Espere gastar R$ 20.00 por pessoa durante a "experiencia".

Ainda assim dou bemvindas a algumas sorveterias. Alguns sao fantasticos.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Liquidacoes Pos-Festas. Recomenda-se Cautela

Todo ano a mesma coisa: Pessoas correm para lojas reais e virtuais por conta das imperdiveis promocoes de vinhos.

Todo ano digo o mesmo: CUIDADO.

Ha muita ratoeira ai para pegar trouxa, ou os Nonos Correa de plantao.

Compre na razao e nao na impulsao.

Ha descontos falsos, vinhos ruins, e pouca boa oportunidade mesmo.

Algumas pessoas tem uma necessidade cronica de tentar levar vantagem, mas o maximo que acontece é um sorvete na testa.

Saturday, January 5, 2013

Leitura De Sabado: Vai Para O Inferno

Mas e se inferno for somente imaginacao dos humanos, como parece ser?

Hell

Into everlasting fire

For hundreds of years, Hell has been the most fearful place in the human imagination. It is also the most absurd

Dec 22nd 2012 | from the print edition

TO MANY in the West, Hell is just a medieval relic. It went out with ducking stools and witchcraft. It should have disappeared with Plato, who said he wanted to delete every reference to future pain from Homer as damaging to moral character; or with Cicero, who said not even old women believed it; or with Seneca, who thought it a fable only for not-yet-shaving boys.

Hell hardly hurts any more. In everyday parlance (“What the hell are you doing?”), it is merely a bark, not a place. As a place, it is anywhere nasty: the London Underground in summer, the worst bits of Lower Manhattan, department stores at sales time, a publisher’s party. Philosophically, Jean-Paul Sartre has encouraged the idea that Hell is other people. Theologically, even the Vatican now defines Hell as a state of exile from the love of God. The devils and pitchforks, the brimstone clouds and wailing souls, have been cleared away, rather as a mad aunt might be shut up in the attic.

But hold on. For many people in the world, Hell still exists; not just as a concept, but as a place on the map. “Hell is Real,” declare the billboards across the American South: as real as the next town. To make it an abstraction is comforting and tidy, but doesn’t work. Religion thrives on fear, as well as hope: without fear, bad behaviour has no sanction and clerical authority wins scant respect. “[People] must have hell-fire flashed before their faces,” wrote General Booth, founder of the Salvation Army, “or they will not move.” And there can be no fear of a place that is not detailed and defined. Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists all still have a Hell, and those who are devout believe in it. So do fundamentalist Christians. For some decades now they have specialised in “Hell Houses” in which terrified American teenagers, herded by “demons”, are shown graphic strobe-lit scenes of brawlers, suicides and drug-takers, as plausibly infernal as any medieval imagining.

Hell looms just as large in the online “Catholic Encyclopedia”. The Vatican may be undecided about it, but the authors are steadfast: only “atheists and Epicureans” do not believe in it. This Hell still fits the description given in the fifth spiritual exercise of St Ignatius Loyola, in which the Jesuit novice, now as in the past, prays “for an intimate sense of the pain that the damned suffer”: to feel the fire, hear the lamentations, smell the brimstone, taste the tears. At the end of the 19th century the teenage James Joyce, shivering in his boots at Clongowes Wood College in Dublin, was treated to the terrors of the full version:

ever to be eaten with flames, gnawed by vermin, goaded with burning spikes, never to be free from those pains; ever to have the conscience upbraid one, the memory enrage…ever to curse and revile the foul demons who gloat fiendishly over the misery of their dupes, never to behold the shining raiment of the blessed spirits; ever to cry out of the abyss of fire to God for an instant, a single instant, of respite from such awful agony, never to receive, even for an instant, God’s pardon…

This Hell is not Hades. Most cultures have their underworlds—Egyptian Amenti, Jewish Sheol, Purgatory—in which the spirits of the dead gather, are judged, and purify themselves for other lives or life in Heaven. The Egyptian “Book of the Dead”, from around 1500BC, introduces the boat, the river, the tests of the human soul and the scales in which its deeds are weighed: all notions borrowed by the Greeks and, later, by Christianity. But sojourns in this dim, labyrinthine land, though often very long, are finite, and may be shortened by the prayers and holy actions of friends still on Earth. A stay there, though tedious and anxious, is for many not much worse than Earth-life.

Hell is not like that. It is a torture-place for the damned in which they are flayed or eaten alive, disembowelled or impaled on stakes, either for incalculable ages or actually for ever. No one can intercede for them, except in extraordinary circumstances. They will never get out, except in cultures that believe in reincarnation. At the end of a stay of aeons of time in Yama Pura, the Hindu Hell—the oldest known, with its subdivisions of heated kettles, iron spikes and “dreadful shrieking”—or at the end of the Buddhist Hell, with its particular torments of scraping the heart and stuffing the skull with hedgehogs, the purged soul returns to Earth as an insect or a reptile, entering the cycle again. From both the Muslim and the Zoroastrian Sell, souls eventually return to Earth: the Zoroastrians on an annual basis, on the last five days of every year.

The Western Hell grew out of an even sterner tradition. It was devised as a permanent punishment for the worst offenders, those who had opposed the gods. These were, for the most part, giants. In Hell, stretched over many acres, lay the Titans who defied Zeus in Greek myth—Prometheus, Tantalus, Sisyphus and the rest—or the bad angels who fought God in Judeo-Christian tradition, Beelzebub, Moloch, Ashtoreth, Belial, “hurld headlong flaming from th’Ethereal Skie”, as Milton wrote, into the lake of fire. Angels who came down to sleep with women also ended up there, together with disobedient stars.

And so Hell might have remained, a club for unruly super-humans. But man’s appetite for vengeful nastiness is pretty unlimited; and inevitably, such a first-rate broiler-house of pain swiftly became a favourite place to put ordinary enemies, routine sinners and, in Dante’s case, almost anyone from Fiesole or Pistoia.

Alongside God’s infinite love burns God’s infinite justice, which is just as unconditional

Hell’s democratisation seems to have begun in Judaism, with both Isaiah and Ezekiel arguing that it did not seem right that good and bad alike should go to Sheol. The wicked, surely, should have deeper and sharper punishment. God should deal with them as they deserved—especially since, in life, they had usually prospered from their wickedness, whereas the virtuous, like Job, had been struck with disasters and covered with sore boils. The Essenes, a more extreme sect, injected the idea of eternity into it, as well as storms and dungeons. Just as man has always made God in his own image, so he projected his own notions of fairness on to the world to come; and ended up with a real horror story.

Going down

Geographically, Hell lies “as far beneath Hades as Hades is beneath the Earth”, wrote Pausanius, a Greek geographer. Dead and living, especially bad dead and living, had to be kept far apart. The Trojan hero Aeneas in Virgil’s “Aeneid” toured Hades, with difficulty enough, and met the shades of both his lover Dido and his father there; but he merely glanced towards Tartarus, glimpsing a high cliff with a castle below it surrounded by a torrent of flame. That single sighting fixed him to the spot in terror. In Plutarch’s “Moralia” a youth called Timarchus had a closer look, seeing a great chasm filled with howling, and the souls of the wicked leaping up and down like stars. Bede in the eighth century saw almost exactly the same: frequent globes of flame rising out of a pit, in which flared the sparks of human souls.

The shape of Hell, as Dante described it (and he, together with Milton, is the primary textual source for the Christian Hell, at least), is an inverted funnel of several layers separated by rocky banks, with each layer deeper and narrower than the last. The Buddhist Hell is similar. But Hell has many mansions. Hinduism has 21 main Hells and a lakh of smaller ones, mostly for religious offences. Sinhalese Buddhism has 136 and Burmese Buddhism 40,040, one for each particular sin—including nosiness, chicken-selling and eating sweets with rice. At the entrance to the Underworld proper in most religions there is a trial of sorts, in which the damned are separated from the not-so-bad. It is always peremptory: as Jesus pictured it, as brief as a farmer ripping weeds out of a field. Then come the long fall and the fire.

Hades, though no cake-walk, is a place of remorse and cleansing. Hell is a place of despair and desolation. Purgatory is founded on tough love; Hell is the pit of God’s unappeasable revenge. And here begin its many contradictions. As dozens of writers have pointed out, from Origen in the second century to Percy Dearmer in the 20th (trying to comfort those who faced imminent death in the trenches of Flanders), God is meant to be love. It seems impossible, then, that he could heap pain on his creatures with no hope at all of redemption. And not just pain, but torment exquisitely designed for the sin in question: so that gluttons wallow in filth, spendthrifts are torn apart by dogs and traitors are cased in ice, di giustizia orribil arte, as Dante says. Everlasting torment repays what Alexander Pope called “the sins of moments”. The four rivers of Hell—Phlegethon, Cocytus, Acheron and Styx—are made of human tears, flowing all the faster because God in his fury will never notice them. Worst of all, Hell was apparently prepared, and waiting, even before poor venal man was created.

Modern biblical scholars have done their best to adjust the picture. They point out that Jesus himself, and even tetchy old St Paul, made no mention of “Hell” or “damnation” in the New Testament. The Greek words used there meant only “judgment” and “condemnation”; and only for “a long time”, aionios, not for ever. Jesus, having evoked that ruthless farmer’s bonfire, also said that a man should forgive his sinning brother not seven times, but “70 times seven”. Paul said God would have mercy on everyone. To all this the Infernalists retort that Jesus really did mean everlasting fire; that God’s ways of caring for his creatures are not man’s; and that alongside God’s infinite love burns God’s infinite justice, which is just as unconditional.

Hell, being based on such appalling vengeance, needed to be hot: as hot as the divine wrath that created it. The name for Hell, in most cultures, meant a hole or hidden place, and this soon became a hole of fire. The Jewish Gehenna, mentioned by Jesus, was no more than the smouldering rubbish tip outside Jerusalem where the bodies of criminals were thrown. The Egyptian Hell, however, was a fiery pit in which people were not merely burned, but hacked into small pieces by “the Commander of Fire” and “the Eater of Entrails”; and both the Hindu and Buddhist Hells put sinners in cauldrons, or on spits basted by many devils, the better to feel the heat.

Fire and ice

Such temperatures, as volcanoes showed, were probably achieved at the centre of the Earth; so Hell must be there, with sulphurous surface pools and vents (as near Naples, where Aeneas went) indicating where the entrance was. But not necessarily. Tobias Swinden’s “An Enquiry into the Nature and Place of Hell” (1714) put it in the sun, the hottest place imaginable, and also the farthest in his scheme of things from the Empyrean, or Heaven; and William Whiston in 1696 put it in a comet, “ascending from the Hot Regions near the Sun, and going into the Cold Regions beyond Saturn, with its long smoaking Tail arising up from it.”

Yet the fire of Hell was—is—no ordinary fire. First, it needed no fuel, and second, it did not consume what it burned. Hell-fire, though it could melt both stars and mountains, did not eat away the damned, for that would have ended their torments; it simply raged and hurt. The devisers of Hell also realised, however, that continual scalding heat could become routine; so deep snow and ice alternated with the fire. In the 14th, 15th and 16th Buddhist Hells the sinner’s skin gradually peeled back “like a water-lily” with the cold, and then fell off. In Dante’s Hell the core was solid ice in which Satan was encased up to the neck, while traitors in the ninth-circle lake of Cocytus found their tears frozen on their faces. Somehow, freezing cold and boiling heat could co-exist there: a scientific paradox, to add to the many worrying theological ones.

Time was another. Hell’s torments introduced to the medieval mind the concept of infinity and how it could be grasped. This was true even of Hells that did not quite last for ever. Buddhist teachers asked their pupils to imagine a cart loaded with 20 kharis of sesame seed, from which once every century one tiny seed was removed; yet when the whole cartload had gone, they would still be in the first Hell, and thousands of further Hells lay beyond it. The young James Joyce was told to imagine a mountain of grains of sand a million miles high, a million miles wide and a million miles thick, from which every million years a little bird carried away one grain of sand; and when the mountain was removed, not a single instant of eternity would have ended.

Hell itself seemed poised uneasily on the very edge of time. Milton, like Hesiod, thought that all beginnings and all ends contended just beyond Hell-gate, and that night and day met there. Dante, on his infernal tour with Virgil as his guide, recorded nights and mornings (though merely by the stars, as he saw no sun). He himself cast a shadow, to the astonishment of the shades around him. And there rose another conundrum. Hell’s fires meant that it could never be convincingly dark, though it was meant to be, made vivid only by screams and by the stink of decay. “No light, but rather darkness visible,” wrote Milton, beautifully; Bede saw “black flames” there: just light enough for the sinner to glimpse the eyes, teeth and implements of devils, and what they were about to do to him.

The naked soul

And throw away the key

Exactly what they did was another source of rich contradiction. The body was obviously left behind at death, mouldering under the Earth. Even the most excruciating pain could no longer touch it. There seemed no point, then, in all these burnings and flayings. Yet those who believed in Hell, in every culture, usually believed in a naked, humanoid soul that was timid and vulnerable outside the body, like an insect out of its carapace. The sheer exposure of the soul made Hell decidedly worse; and the soul’s very immortality, as argued by Plato and endorsed by Christians, helped make eternal pain possible. Hell could not lose its vivid grip until Descartes in the 17th century declared that the soul was immaterial, and thus beyond physical pain. It was this, as much as the diminishing clout of priests and preachers in industrialising Europe, that at last began to damp the flames.

From that point on, the topographical Hell began to fade. Its smorgasbord of terror became largely psychological, a matter of loneliness and regret. The wisest of the ancients had reached that conclusion many centuries before. “It is but our own fraud which frightens us”, wrote Cicero; “it is our own evil thoughts which madden us”. Even Thomas Aquinas agreed: much of the anguish of the damned, he wrote in his “Summa Theologiae” (1265-74), stemmed from the knowledge that they could never reach happiness. Hell meant ceasing to hope. So, by inversion, hopelessness was Hell.

Milton, too, had foreseen this. Though few Hells were physically as vivid or as detailed as the one he painted in “Paradise Lost”, with boiling oceans breaking on black shores and “glossie scurff” lying on the “griesly” hills, his Satan unforgettably expressed the modern version, that incessant gnawing of the worm within: “Which way I flie is Hell; my self am Hell;”

The mind is its own place, and in it self
Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.

“Hell”, wrote William Blake around 1790, “is the being shut up in the possession of corporeal desires”. “Mark”, he went on, “that I do not believe there is such a thing litterally.”

By then, few did. The theology of Hell had long strained credulity too far, even in the Middle Ages. It could not be just and right, for example, that all the unbaptised were automatically sent there, though doctrine (and Dante) said they had to be. So Hell had acquired anterooms, in which virtuous pagans from the ancient world walked together in pleasant meadows rather like the Elysian Fields. Limbo, the first circle of Hell, was created for unbaptised infants, and the second circle, the destination of those who had died unwisely for love, contained no pain beyond ceaseless yearning. Lovers were even together there, though not happily.

Popular sentiment also believed that the principal actors of the Old Testament—Adam and Eve, Moses, Noah and the rest—had been swept up out of Hell by Jesus after his crucifixion, just as Hercules had several times harrowed Tartarus and the god Siva, moved by pity and anger, had transported a band of souls out of Yama Pura. Even the famously bad might be allowed a respite: St Brendan, visiting Hell, saw Judas sitting quietly on a rock on a Sunday, his day off from being tormented. Aquinas said that though Christ descended only to that part of Hell where the just were imprisoned, “his influence was felt in every part”, confounding the malice of the damned. (Some Catholic theologians, however, say that Christ’s harrowing of Hell never happened, and is a misreading of the First Epistle of Peter, 3:19.)

That is as may be. But when a place becomes too awful for even its adherents to tolerate without escape routes, its days are numbered. In Hell’s case, it should have been sunk long ago by the weight of its contradictions. But the key to its survival lies in the writings of St Augustine, who, of all people, ought to have been tolerant of sinners: to paraphrase, “Knowledge of the torments of the damned is part of heavenly bliss.” St Bernardino of Siena took it even further: there could be no perfect sweetness of song in Heaven, he wrote, “if there were no infernal descant from God’s justice.” Just as there can be no light without dark, and no sound without silence, so everlasting celestial joys depend on a contrast of everlasting horror. Without Hell, you can’t have Heaven.

Fonte: http://www.economist.com/news/christmas/21568590-hundreds-years-hell-has-been-most-fearful-place-human-imagination-it?fsrc=scn/tw/te/tr/intoeverlastingfire2

Friday, January 4, 2013

Musica De Sexta-Feira

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

Ignorar calorias do álcool ameaça dietas de ano-novo

Leiam mais em http://www.estadao.com.br/noticias/geral,ignorar-calorias-do-alcool-ameaca-dietas-de-ano-novo,979766,0.htm

Moderacao nao faz mal a ninguem.....

E se for beber, beba menos, mas beba melhor.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Crise De Vinhos Argentinos. Parte2

Today in english.

Uupdate: Foram os proprios eleitores de la que colocaram esse governo onde esta. As vezes a democracia nao funciona mesmo. Rivalidades idiotas de esportes de lado, da dó da Argentina e alguns paises da america do sul ultimamente. Espero que o pais onde moro nao entre nesse rol tao seleto tao em breve.

Argentine Wine Dragged Down By Red Tape

Protestors bang cooking pans as they march against the government's economic policies

As a tough year for viticulturists draws to a close, Amanda Barnes takes stock.

Posted Monday, 26-Nov-2012

Public frustration with the economic policies of Argentine president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner is on the rise – as evidenced by a recent series of mass cacerolazos, or pot-banging protests. Yet while the wine industry is at the forefront of the discontent, few producers will speak on the record for fear of reprisals. What they describe under a cloak of anonymity is an industry ensnared by changing economic policies and hit by retaliatory action from abroad.

Chief among their complaints is a law introduced this year demanding that government licenses must be issued before any goods can be imported. Not surprisingly, the wine industry is significantly affected; it depends on foreign suppliers for more than 90 percent of its winemaking accessories – including ingredients, processing and bottling equipment, and oak barrels.

What's more, a shortage of government staff to process the license applications has caused havoc for wine producers, with delays stretching over six months or more as imported items sit idle – or waste away – at Customs.

One winery had its personalized corks held up for 10 months, forcing it to postpone bottling and sales for almost a year. Another winemaker has lost next year's contract to produce wine for an international brand because he wasn't allowed to import the requisite machinery for attaching specialized screw caps. As a result, 2012’s wine remains unbottled.

“It has been a nightmare,” said a third producer, who brings in wine from Chile to sell through his Argentine winery. “I can only just get it in through Customs now."
In addition – like other Argentine businesses – wineries report that some license applications are refused without explanation, throwing production and export plans into total disarray.

To make matters worse, the new licensing legislation was introduced at the most critical time of the year for winemakers – the beginning of the 2012 harvest season. Specialist wine-accessory importers suffered badly as trade ground to a halt, and some businesses collapsed. Suppliers abroad are perplexed. One company received a visit last month from its German suppliers, who wanted to see the situation for themselves. They returned home with nothing resolved.

And the chaos doesn't stop there. In 2011, the Argentine government introduced an informal trade-balancing policy, under which firms can import goods only if they export products of an equal U.S. dollar value. With the exception oftannins that are shipped abroad, Argentina does not make specialist wine accessories. So importers and producers have been forced to look for imaginative ways to meet the state's requirements.

Some have opted to buy import rights from export-oriented businesses working in other fields, who usually charge a hefty 10 percent commission. Naturally, this raises the price of the imported wine equipment. When combined with Argentina's astronomical inflation rate (the government puts it at 10 percent; unofficial estimates are three times that), the increased costs are potentially ruinous for wineries. Meanwhile, other New World producers are becoming increasingly competitive.

© Pulenta Estate | A Porsche Carrera parked in the cellar at the Pulenta Estate
Even before the latest regulations were introduced, wineries were using their export credits to import unusual products. Back in 1994, fast-car enthusiasts Eduardo and Hugo Pulenta from Pulenta Estate each wanted a Porsche. With few foreign car companies operating in Argentina, their only option was to import the vehicles themselves. Today, Pulenta runs a Porsche salesroom as a side business to its wine operation, which exports 80 percent of its 360,000-liter annual output. In a reverse of this situation, some car manufacturers, including Hyundai and BMW, use exports of wine and other agricultural goods to balance their imports.

Some Argentine wine companies have looked for local solutions. Matias Michelini, winemaker for Sophenia, Zorzal andPassionate Wines, wanted to start making wine in imported egg-shaped tanks. However, import fees of around $11,500 a tank made this too costly. Michelini called in local concrete producer Daniel Moreno, who came up with tanks that cost just one-third of the imported examples. Moreno is now selling them to other Argentine winemakers, too.
For the Argentine government, such an arrangement proves that the regulations are working. According to President Kirchner, the trade-balancing policy is a reaction to the global economic crisis in which there is a “real trade war between all major economies.” She explains that the new restrictive import policies “protect the domestic industry against all odds.”

But with enforcement of the new regulations being tightened, there have been worrying reports of heavy-handed behavior by officials. The Argentine media have reported cases of the national tax agency, the AFIP, using investigations as both a threat and a punishment against those who criticize the government. Hence the reluctance of the wine industry to speak out on the record.
A further source of frustration lies in Argentina's financial controls. Although wineries sell to international clients almost exclusively in U.S. dollars, no Argentine business is allowed to save in dollars. Instead, their income is converted into Argentine pesos – a currency that has little value either inside or outside the country. This is evident in the dollar’s black-market exchange rate, which is almost 50 percent higher than the official rate.

With the "dollar clamp" diminishing confidence in the economy, some in the wine industry are trying to safeguard their savings elsewhere for fear of another economic collapse.
One financial director admits that his winery – along with a handful of others – has created a triangle of companies abroad to sell wine at a lower rate to an intermediary country. The wine is then sold on to the export market, in dollars, at double the price. Half of the money goes back to the company in Argentina, while the rest is saved in a foreign bank account.

© Pulenta Estate | Pulenta's 135-hectare vineyard in Luján de Cuyo, Mendoza
Most Argentines are growing accustomed to the need to search for loopholes. But the wine industry fears that its current difficulties will both affect the country's position in the international market and reduce foreign investment.

Along with the struggles over imports, the Rural Land Law passed in late 2011 prohibits foreign investors from buying more than 1,000 hectares – barely bigger than a "boutique" vineyard in Argentina. In Mendoza, where private vineyard estates had blossomed over the past five years, foreigners are becoming wary of buying land, even if only a couple of hectares.
“People are still investing in Argentina – Argentina is still a great investment,” said the property manager of one private vineyard estate. "It is just that everyone is asking more questions now… They want to know if investment is safe.”
A flying winemaker, who wished to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals, said: "Argentina has great potential; it has the climate, conditions, experience and knowledge to make great wine. It is the unsteady politics that are ruining it."

There is also growing discontent among countries that import Argentine wines. In May, the U.S., Canada and Britain joined the European Union and 12 other countries in complaining to the World Trade Organization about Argentina's import policies.
In addition, America, the United Kingdom and Brazil have imposed retaliatory restrictions on Argentine wine and other products. As a result, in the year to September exports of packaged wine fell 6.3 percent, according to a Wines of Argentina report.
At 980 million liters a year, domestic consumption is not enough to sustain Argentine wine production at its current level (total output stands at 1.5 billion liters annually). While the quality of Argentine wine has improved in leaps and bounds over the past decade – leading to increased prestige worldwide – the industry still relies on bringing in much of its experience and knowledge from overseas through consultants and technology.
The greatest concern is that its hard-fought progress will be strangled by red tape.

Monday, December 31, 2012

Crise Argentina Ja Afeta Com Gravidade Producao De Vinhos. Parte 1

Leitor bem informado sabe que o governo Argentino ficou sem dinheiro apos quebra da safra de soja de 2011/12 e comecou a dificultar ao maximo as importacoes. Eis que essas serias restricoes ja impactam, e seriamente a industria vinicola.

Leia essa entrevista do veneravel Paul Hobbs. A real eye opener. Como bem disse FHC no Manhattan Connection de fim de ano, o futuro da Argentina é o passado dela. Belo artigo, coerente e bem preocupante. Imagina so aqueles que correram para investir em vinicolas na argentina....

El mar de malbec barato de Argentina puede estar a punto de agotarse, y no sólo por una menor cosecha en 2012, reducida en más del 20 por ciento.

Según el enólogo Paul Hobbs, el gobierno argentino está imponiendo límites proteccionistas en los suministros que harán que sea difícil para las bodegas producir vinos de calidad. "El gobierno dice que hay que exportar todo lo que importa", dice Hobbs. "Eso hace que sea difícil de tener suministros de gran calidad como corchos, barricas, cápsulas, y todo lo demás."

Esta medida añade otro nivel de dificultad a la rápida inflación estimada en más del 20 por ciento, lo que eleva el costo de la mano de obra en un país donde los buenos trabajadores no son fáciles de conseguir.

Hobbs dice que los Malbec argentinos de alta calidad de u$s 10 a u$s 12 de los últimos años, es probable que desaparezcan. "Ya veremos menos calidad, y menos ofertas"

La decisión del gobierno sigue una larga historia de proteccionismo en la Argentina, que reprimió una de las industrias más grandes del mundo del vino hasta finales de 1990, de acuerdo con el periodista Ian Mount, con sede en Buenos Aires.

Las empresas pueden obtener una licencia de 180 días para la importación temporal de barriles, corchos y cápsulas, pero pocas bodegas nuevas pueden exportar un valor equivalente de vino en tan sólo 180 días. "Las reglas harán que esto sea casi imposible para las bodegas nuevas", dice Mount.

Además, cree que la libertad de acción que gozan los burócratas en la interpretación individual de las normas, hace que sea difícil para las empresas el tener certeza de lo que se permitirá. Y lo dice con cierto riesgo personal. "En la Argentina, si no gusta tu artículo, recibes una llamada de la policía fiscal", dice Mount, que ha escrito sobre el país para The Wall Street Journal y The New York Times.

La agencia Reuters informó en agosto que el gobierno de la presidenta Cristina Fernández había multado y demandado a los economistas que habían publicado una tasa de inflación real, es decir, una que difiere de la cifra oficial del gobierno de poco más del 10 por ciento.

Los productores de leche vierten camiones de ese producto en una protesta económica. Pero no es posible que el malbec sea vertido en el mercado internacional. "Los exportadores tienen que renunciar a márgenes o subir los precios", dice Hobbs.

Fonte: http://www.diariodelvino.com/

Prosecco Toma (Sem Trocadilho)Lugar De Champagne Na Combalida Europa

Saturday, December 29, 2012

Comidas Que Perdem "Validade". Que Fazer?

Leiam ou oucam. In english.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2012/12/26/167819082/dont-fear-that-expired-food

Leitura De Sabado

Anybody out there?

http://www.economist.com/blogs/feastandfamine/2012/12/harvests-and-farmland?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/unyielding

Feast and famine

Demography and development

Unyielding

Dec 19th 2012, 16:28 by J.P.

SOME of the world’s most significant problems never intrude upon headlines. They make themselves felt indirectly, if at all. One example comes from agriculture. Food riots and hunger make news; so, occasionally, do land grabs in developing countries or arguments over genetically modified foods. But the trend that underlies and helps explain these matters is rarely talked about. This is the decline, sometimes reversal, in the growth in yields of some of the world’s staple crops. All the more reason to welcome a new study by the University of Minnesota and McGill University in Montreal, which looks in some detail at where, and how far, this decline is occurring.

The authors take a vast number of data points – 2.5m over almost half a century, 1961-2008 – for the four crops that are most important for people’s nutrition: rice, wheat, maize and soyabeans. They find that on between 24% and 39% of all harvested areas (depending on the crop), the improvement in yields that took place before the 1980s then slowed down or declined in the 1990s and 2000s. That is a deterioration over a very substantial area, even though it is worth pointing out that yields are continuing to improve on a majority of the world’s farmland.

There are two worrying features of the slowdown. One is that it has been particularly sharp in the world’s most populous countries, India and China. Their ability to feed themselves has been an important source of relative stability both within the countries and on world food markets. That self-sufficiency cannot be taken for granted if yields continue to slow down or reverse.

Second, yield growth has been lower in wheat and rice than it has been in maize and soyabeans. This is problematic because wheat and rice are more important as foods: between them, they account for around half of all calories consumed. Maize and soyabeans are more important as feedgrains (ie, they are fed to livestock or used to produce fuel). The authors note tartly – and accurately - that “we have preferentially focused our crop improvement efforts on feeding animals and cars [rather than on] crops that feed people and are the basis of food security in much of the world.”

The report qualifies the more optimistic findings of another new paper, “Peak Farmland and the prospect for land sparing,” which suggests that the world will not, after all, have to dig up a lot more land for farming in order to feed 9 billion people in 2050, as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (among others) has argued.

Instead, it says, thanks to slowing population growth, land currently ploughed up for crops might be able to revert to forest or wilderness. This could happen. The trouble is that the forecast assumes continued improvements in yields, which may not actually happen.

The Minnesota/McGill report ought to be yet another warning about the dangers of neglecting research into crop improvements. The increase in yields during the 1970s and 1980s was the direct result of the improved seeds of the Green Revolution; the more recent slowdown tracks in the decline in basic research since then. It is no coincidence that the most significant crop research is now being done by large companies such as Monsanto, Pioneer and Syngenta, and has concentrated upon corn and soya - the crops which are doing better. Demonising these firms is not a very good way to go about feeding people.