Doris Lessing won the nobel prize of literature, and I couldn’t be happier. I seldom read fiction, and only her, vonegut and phillip k. dick got my attention.
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To celebrate, I decided to repost my comments on her science fiction series, Canopus in argos: Archives. It’s written in portuguese, but I’ll translate it to english along the week.
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doris lessing
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terminando agora o livro sobre os pleiadianos, lembro que comecei com esse assunto lendo a série de ficção científica “canopus em argos” de doris lessing. como só achava os livros dela por sebos da vida, li a série entrecortada… vai abaixo a descrição dos cinco livros:
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shikasta: o primeiro dos cinco livros, e mais grosso também. vale o esforço. dá ênfase na vida de johor, um canopiano na pele de humano, e toda a trajetória do imbroglio gerado pelo dia do julgamento final da terra. é, parece cheesy, mas é muito bem construído, toda a faculdade que ele passa (pulando de informante em informante, nada oficial), o sense of emergency e a sensação de manter-se puro nos dias finais. a história é contada (se bem me lembro) pelo ponto de vista da irmã dele.
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casamento entre as zonas três, quatro e cinco: trata da terra no passado, quando foi dividida por cinco zonas experimentais, e os casamentos eram arranjados entre os aliens na base de suas alianças. todo narrado pela mulher da zona matriarcal a se casar com o homem da zona “espartana”. bons relatos das civilizações, e o tempo é o “humano”, ou seja, se vc lê-lo isoladamente só verá uma história medieval/fantástica, a la marion zimmer bradley.
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the sirian experiments: li no original. esse é o mais viajante de todos. todo narrado como conversação oficial entre um siriano um canopiano, sobre as fases da terra. como o tempo é alienígena, as vezes mostra-se detalhes históricos importantes, e as vezes o tempo dá um fast foward, de modo que fica dificil correlacionar as civilizações com seus relatos (lembrando que os aliens têm nomes diferentes para nossas tribos). destaque para o momento em que o canopiano relata sua visita a uns lideres tribais/medievais (que fiquei sem saber que civilização era), todos sedentos por suas brilhantes jóias, e ele tentando explicar, emanar, de alguma maneira, que aqueles cristais não eram símbolos de poder (o máximo que os líderes conceguiam conceber) mas seu pressure suit para conseguir navegar na vibração terráquea, já corrompida. e, claro, o momento em que explicam a queda do eixo da terra, alertada a civilizaçães anteriores e lamentada por e sofrida por muitos.
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the making of the representative for planet 8: esse foi o único que não li, me toquei agora. amazon, cadê você???
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os agentes sentimentais: relatos de um siriano cansado e perdido na Terra atual, com suas dificuldades de manter contato com seu true self e constantes crises de fé. a história passa-se desde os contatos que ele precisava manter no início de sua “encarnação” e a medida que ele vai se corrompendo, e as visitas dos seus colegas aliens, embasbacados com a influência moralmente tóxica do planeta terra, e seus questionamentos se ainda valia a pena contar com ela.
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well, é isso. se você leu as brumas de avalon, então raise the bar a lil’ bit e parta para feministas mais avançadas. se acharem qquer um desses em sebos da vida, comprem e leiam. parece um emaranhado de intrigas mas é tudo conduzido com maestria pela autora…

promethea DVD
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I’m used to read comics on my computer (all I have to do is to turn my notebook to the side, and view the pages as a slideshow) and since I installed iDVD, i was dying to try it out.
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so, I decided to make a comics DVD, which means, a slideshow DVD with an entire comic collection. I wanted to make sure the navigation was the same or better than the paper version, so I decided for a comic I didn’t read it yet and I would surely love. alan moore’s promethea seemed like a good bet.
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below are some screenshots of my progress. sadly, I realized I had no more blank DVDs to spare, so I have to wait till I’ll buy a new batch.
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click on each image to view it bigger, with technical notes (another nice feature of flickr). then, roll the mouse over each square to read them.
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DVD cover menu: this one is default from iDVD. since you can’t use more than 12 chapters and I had 31 issues, I organized each 3 issues on one.
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chapter detail: iDVD shows the exact same folders and organization from iPhoto (pictures) and iTunes (music). it’s no good at refreshing, tho, so the best move is to organize all folders & pictures on iPhoto, and then start on iDVD.
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project map: iDVD has a limit of 99 images on each slideshow, so a manga has to be chopped down, for example. it worked fine with american comics, tho.
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disclaimer: I made it for my own consumption, and although I downloaded the entire collection from bittorrent (bad boy) I also own the editions. i guess I don’t have to bother about it, since ABC comics is a small company, and instead of think “ohmygod, those little rascals found another way to rip us off” they’ll probably think “hey, another source of revenue for our collections, and look: it’s cheaper to produce than our trade paperbacks!” (sadly, it only works good on dvd notebooks - you have to rotate the monitor to read it)
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update:sadly, ABC comics is a branch of wildstorm comics, which is an offshot of DC comics, owned by warner. shoud I wait the media conglomerate unleash its minion of ferocious lawyers upon my (literaly) poor soul, or is the plutocratic police state of amerika not done yet?

DIY nation
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o’reilly network (the good, geeky ones, not the anal-retentive fella at fox) are publishing a new magazine, called make.
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hm, nice hacks (and good idea for them, i’m so afraid of big technical books, but chop the content in fancy lessons, and i’m fine with it).

MEA lectures: media as a leading component of “DNA” of the “Super-Organism” of a global human culture
from felix rizvanov
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the title may sound pompous (and it is, kmon!), and the session could be utter bullshit, or a weird new approach. i bet on the last one, and was right.
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felix is a physicist, and he places everything in a 7 levels’ system. it kinda cabalistic, but he’s a physicist, so i suppose it’s not a new-age mumbo-jumbo, coz he can back his assertions. after all, we’re talking about patterns that repeats in different systems, field magic here.
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his 6th level, the solar system, reminded me the pleiadians channeling books perception. and the cosmic one, his 7th, is kinda the same as leary’s 8th circuit.
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i won’t get hermetic here and build tables of comparison. do the math.
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he argues we’re entering in the noosphere (the thinking earth, right?), but it’s preying on the lower levels (biological, ecological, cognitive…), so we should expect a crash and aftermath.
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and i do expect a backlash, too, so i was all ears. think of virilio’s information bomb (here and here), a symbolic blackout or something like that. interesting times, indeed. maybe i’m just a third world guy in a relative peaceful environment, looking for moving shadows all around, but it sounds more and more real to me. after all, “peaceful” and “america” don’t fit well together any longer… ;-/

cherished dead trees
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i’m slowly growing my book collection here in NYC…
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roll the mouse over the books to read about each one (or two :)… incomplete yet…
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next, please
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i just finished reading Connected: Or What It Means To Live in the Network Society, from steven shaviro.
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and I’m feeling proud! :)
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he has a blog, BTW.

finishing books
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after the two historical illuminatus in three days (it’s gonna be a living hell to find the third one…), I finished war in the age of intelligent machines and I’m killing connected too.
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good thing my when my cat chew my ac adaptor, in the end.
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and i just bought the magic mountain (praised as ” the best book ever” from a lot of heavy thinkers) by 50 cents.