Today's head news...

One of the news today draw my attention and made me be concerned because of its implications to the headin of today's society as you know it. If you are following the news, you have read, heard or whatever, that George W. Bush asked the US Congress to act quicly and pass a financial rescue package to save the US economy from a serious recession. But be aware: if this goes through its the beginning of intereference of the state over the regulation of the market and the economy which in turn will mean the end of liberalism because there will be no freedom for the market to work. It will always be controlled by the ones governing the country.
I hope more people saw this and be concerned as I am...

What's the price?

Let's get back to old stuff, the kind of rhetorical/ philosophical ideas that are marks of this blog. Everyone probably heard that human life doesn't (or shouldn't) have a price. I share this idea though I'm conscious that it doesn't apply everywhere and even in some cases life worth nothing. But ironically I heard many times people have a price. In other words, people sell themselves in exchange of money and they do anything, it's just a matter of making the "right" price. Interesting...

... and conclusion of yesterday's post

Today I'm not much in a mood to write for the blog... but fortunately I remember that yesterday I didn't include on the post another interesting aspect of the Netherlands. It's something that probably exists in every country of the world... I'm talking about traffic information and the reason that I'm mentioning it comes from the amount of information they give here in the Netherlands. There's a website called ANWB (I'm sorry but I don't know what the letters stand for) which gives information about traffic and moreover, it shows a map with real traffic information as for example showing the roads with colors depending on the speed the cars that are circulating on that road. It also has pictures taken by real cameras over the roads, position of gas stations and much more. It's a pity that the website is only in Dutch, but it is intended to serve the Netherlands so that makes sense :P
Well, check the website (click on the word ANWB here or above) yourselves and who knows, maybe other countries have also efficient ways of giving traffic information and this can be a way of sharing how it works in other places...

A new chapter... (continuation)

Yesterday I was quite vague and weird so let me try to give a small explanation to what is going on.

My idea is to give more life to this blog. The initial idea was to have several people contributing to the blog but unfortunately the friends to whom I've shared the existence of the blog have tight agendas and therefore can only contribute with comments once in a while. But I still hope to see them post on their own one day :P

Anyway, I've said this several times (actually too many times) but now I'm setting the goals very low so that I can contribute daily. So every day I'll try to write in one or two lines a summary of an idea. Then with a little bit of less frequency I'll try just to introduce a topic and with even less frequency I'll try to go deep with one of the topics previously introduced.

So today there goes another idea:
"Honesty has to always go along with trust and respect. And more importantly the time frame to use them. One can always shout the truth than no one will listen if it is not done in the right moment."

A new chapter...

Many times you read the same conversation from me that this has changed and that has changed and I want to do this and bla bla bla...

Let's cut to the chase and be practical.

An idea to share and comment:

Behind a strong love there is also a strong friendship on a long time relationship.

Latest developments...

I have big news to give... my life has changed completely since last week because a beautiful angel came into my life and put it upside down.
Now all my time goes to my family, to her and to finishing my studies which means that the blog will be inactive for a while. My sincerest apologies...

Meanwhile, a great friend of mine gave me a text to put on my blog. His artistic name is D’Lay (lets make some publicity to him and his band Orphelia –> google it if you want to know more :P)Unfortunately it is in Portuguese so my dearest English readers still have to wait for a new “fresh” post.

Here’s the text (and I have to make the warning for parental advice because of the explicit content on this post :P)

“Cabrões!

Querem-me roubar, querem-me a mim para eles, querem negar o meu
pensamento, querem negar minha existência. O mundo dos prazeres
conspurca-me quando não o presido!

Todo o revolucionário tem de andar bem fodido.
A força da revolução tem de ser pura, não pode ser imiscuída nas águas
porcas do desejo.
Quando quero foder, não quero saber!

O bom revolucionário anda bem fodido.
Quando cuspimos o leite da reprodução, temos de inspirar os fumos da revolução!

Ah! C'a granda foda! (Obrigado querida, és a maior, amo-te muito!)

Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões!
Tenho direito a ser feliz cabrões! E vou ser! Quer queiras quer não queiras! Não mandas em mim, olha olha!

À noite, no escuro, vejo melhor, estou melhor. Os monstros debaixo da
cama só assustam reaccionários, só eles é que escondem fortunas
debaixo dos colchões.

Quem não deve, não teme.

Em terra de cegos, quem tem um olho que se cuide, porque a inveja vê no escuro.

Ena pá! Bueda giro! Tenho saudades vossas! E jantarmos todos juntos?! Isso é que era!

Ri-te! Tristezas não pagam dívidas, e só os tesos é que fodem!

Eheheheheheheheheehehehehehe!

Homem que é homem caga no mel e papa as abelhas!

Ahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahah!

(Oiço apenas os ecos de mim mesmo. Não me vi vomitar, apenas vi o vómito.)

(A sério, aí os típicos cabecilhas que marquem uma janta. Nem só de saudosismos vive o homem (e a mulher))”

Forgive him for is unordinary speech… :P

Time for a change of speech…

This is a misery, as it tends to become a habit. The last time I remember writing to the blog was my last flight to Lisbon...
I keep complaining but the fact is I write and maintain the blog active, even if not as often as I desire. Additionally I am "organizing" my ideas and beliefs in order to find my path and what I want to do in the future. Hmm… this kind of reminds me of my last post, which was very pessimist about the future. Meanwhile some time as passed but the news and developments since then keep me believe that the future is going to be tense and problematic unless our generation try to make something change.
So far I've spent most of my time criticizing and pointing out the defects of the actual society and I think that is enough… for a while. I feel I managed to gather a little bit of information about how society works and its problems but I think now is time to go to the next step, that is try to find solutions for some of the problems that I have been mentioning as well as a way to apply them in reality. I believe it will be a challenging task and never forget that there should be some debating first, but now it’s time for action more than any other thing.
As I am writing this post I already had some opportunities to put this idea of pass to action into practice and so far I am thrilled with the results.
Unfortunately the conversations I had sometimes did not lead to a conclusion as happened when the topic was abortion, but at least after it I had a clearer view of some of the sides involved and what was really into discussion.
But some did end with good ideas, as for example when the topic was the prisons. How to make a prison less of a burden to society and more useful to it having a minimum life conditions for the prisoners? I'll just give one small idea that was discussed because I don't want to make this post huge: a system of work with rewards. The prisoner has the minimum but if he wants more he will have to work to deserve it. Why this might work? Because humans are ambitious by nature and one always wants more if they are given the chance. And this could be used to subsidize, for example, technical courses so that they could be doing something they like and get rehabilitated for getting back to society.
That doesn't mean that I stop showing some bad actions and attitudes currently happening because I still feel that for some of my friends part of the facts that I say are not trusted or believed by them. But they'll cease to be septic about what I say if I show my sources and how credible they are. Maybe someday they start to believe and see that there is need to people intervene in the society.
One thing is already sure: I gave up waiting for comments. If they appear, great, but even if they don't I don't care anymore... I'll keep on my way and fight for a fairer and more equal world.
What the hell can be done and what is my plan of action - you might ask?
Well, before I can start acting some reading and study might be useful so as a start I'm going to read the book Kapital of Karl Marx. For some the "bible" of the communism might seem too radical start, but I believe that the book is much more useful than to apply communism: for example it contains a concept of an economical system that I want to take a look. If afterwards I don't see a way to apply some of the ideas in it, at least I understand better the communism and know its advantages and also its flaws.
For example I believe it will be easier for me to discuss politics after I read the book and specially talk to someone that defends communism.
I guess it’s enough for me. I already say what I wanted…

PS: It’s just a minor detail as it doesn’t change anything in the post, but this post was written in the beginning of the month. However only now I found time to review the post and publish it on the internet. Sorry for that… but FINALLY it’s here.

In the sequence of the post “Auction’s website in Germany”...

The world must be getting crazier every day… I read an article few days ago which title was referring that French landlords are taking advantage of the crisis by renting or sharing rooms in exchange of “services sexueles”. The original article was published on the “Libération” and the content of the news explains the new kind of business with rooms due to the high price of the houses in France. According to the article, instead of the advertisement for the room with the price of it, the new “model” of renting proposes the payment of the room with the body, sometimes implicit but other really explicit.

I will just add that from one of the phone calls that the French journalists did for the article, one of the guys who had a room for rent was telling that the person who would take the room have to, among other things, be naked as frequently as possible and hang the legs on the sofa to excite the owner.

So tell me… what the hell are people thinking?! Where will this kind of things lead to?!

Women’s Day

Let me try once more to spark a little bit things here in this blog… As you all probably know, almost one week ago there was the International Women’s Day (8 March – I didn’t know but there is also a Wikipedia article on the subject. Check it out…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Women's_Day
Although so many days have passed since then, I think it is a good subject for this blog: women and their role in society. I’ll start with a carton that I found on a Portuguese newspaper that I find very interesting and that will give the mote for today’s post:

I think that still today there are many aspects where society tends to be very “male”, even considering the so called “Developed countries”. Still, I notice that mentalities are changing and more and more the “weaker” gender (:P :P) is ending… despite all the obstacles women had and have to deal.

I believe that both genders should have the same fundamental rights, like for example the right to live (by the way, did you know that until recently for the Portuguese law, a man who found his wife in his bed with another man committing adultery could kill both of them and that would be considered a small crime, since for the law the man was “cleaning” his honor), right to personal integrity, right of freedom, freedom of speech, information and press, etc… in sum, everything that is on the Portuguese Constitution.

However, I disagree when I find that there are laws where is stated which jobs the women CAN’T perform (yeah, that exists… men have to do some heavy jobs that the law prohibits women to do :P). And I also believe that should exist some positive healthy discrimination because women are better at some things while men at others. Well, physiologic the genders are different: men are stronger than women; women are multi tasking… and many more differences could be pointed out. And that should be emphasized and those differences could be used to head towards a fair and equal society, where each gender would do what it is best on…

One last thing… I find very disappointing reading the Bible and find how the woman is retracted there… like an object belonging to men (I wish I had here the Bible with me to give an example… oh well, when I’m back to Delft I’ll do that….). At least so far in my reading…

I think I’ll stop here… I just wanted to give a starter… :P

Changes...

Wow, this last week was a pretty busy one… I had much to, but I hope that I can compensate by writing a little more this new week. Before approaching any of the subjects’ that I want to talk about today, I have to sadly announce the end of my other blog due to some problems with it. I hope to be able to recover and continue it someday.

As a consequence now I have more free time for this blog, which means that from now on, I’ll write 2 weekly posts instead of just 1 and I’ll do that whenever I feel to, so not the two at the same time, but spaced and somewhere during the week. And another consequence is that I have to “transfer” the goals of the other blog to this one, as for example, practicing the summarize skill.

Anyway, more important things need to be discussed now… :P

PS: For those who are interested, a new comment has been done on the post “Elections and the duty to vote” and I think it’s going to be interesting the future developments… :P

Auction’s website in Germany

This past week was pretty rough for me because I had some “extracurricular” activities to do, most of them demanding from my creativity and skills. Anyway, to compensate for not having written to this blog this last week, this week I will wrote not one, but three posts, each handling a different subject.

So, the first one is about an article that I read on the news. It happened in Germany, which means not much far from where I am (NL). The title of the article is (after translation): “Sexual auction’s website forced to give names of users”. In short, the article was about a woman who had sex with 6 guys (website’s users) and one of them knocked her up. Then, the woman wanted to find who the father was but the company didn’t want to reveal the real identity of the men claiming confidentiality of data. Well, she went to court and won.

I brought this article because of the idea behind it. First of all, my intentions are not making any judgment or criticize, but just to wonder about it. I’m realizing that more and more sex has become so ordinary that sometimes it looks like it is the same as buying a pair of socks: you look for what you want, then pay, then “do” it.

I’m not worried about the existence of such “activities”, but I start to wonder when I find that they are expanding and growing. I don’t even really know how to address this topic. Is it good idea to censor it? Is it good idea to just ignore it?

The way that this looks to be heading, one day people will do like in the movie “Demolition Man”, where people, to have pleasure, put a kind of virtual reality glasses and then their brain receives electrical impulses simulating the feelings and emotions of someone having sex.

I don’t know, but sex is more than physical and matters who the other person is. It gives a special meaning to the moment and makes it somehow special.

I’ll keep thinking what these kind of news mean…

Canadian driver

Now the second post… The subject comes again from an article that I read on a newspaper’s website few days ago.

The “action” takes place in Canada and it is astonishing. A drunk driver was found by policemen wondering around inside the police station with his car parked just in front of it. Then he was put into custody for irresponsible driving.

This is something really hard to imagine in the place where I come from (PT), where a drunk driver would always try to avoid the police. But these are the small things that show the identity of a country and the people living in it.

However, what I don’t understand, no matter how I think of it, is that Portuguese people act differently when they live outside Portugal. They usually live according with the local traditions and customs though trying somehow keeping their identity and showing the positive side of the Portuguese people.

It’s a pity that Portuguese have an overall good reputation outside their country, not only by the image they give, but also by the results they obtain, and still Portugal is growing and developing so slow. I think one of the things missing in Portugal is people actually concerned in defending their rights and fulfilling their duties as citizens. And I’m not referring talking and giving opinions. I’m referring of real actions and attitudes like, for example, participating actively in politics or know the constitution of the country. People who delegate their rights and duties to others end up being explored by those others and won’t live better and happy.

Wake up people and start caring about Portugal! Don’t let others do your “job”! Start contributing to make Portugal a better country!...

Cool car

Finally, the third post for this week is about a light subject. Since in the last post I was writing about drivers, why not write about cars and new models.

Very recently I read (another) newspaper´s article regarding a new car. What this car had different from others that made me wrote about it? Well, it’s based on an existing car (Lotus Esprit) used in a James Bond’s movie. Second, it’s a convertible. So far, nothing new, but now comes the interesting part: the car also works under water, making it a king of submarine car. Cool hein!… Look at the photos:

Oh, just to make a small quote:

“The sQuba can go up to 10 meters under water thanks to its structure 'Carbon Nano Tubes', two propellers and two jets. Rinspeed, the manufacturer of sQuba, inspired on the car Lotus Esprit of a movie of James Bond. The list of equipment includes a system to give oxygen to the two people on the car.”

Well, that’s all for this week. See you next week…

European Airliners Association Ranking

This is just another topic that in the end covers another downside of the Portuguese society.

A few days ago I was reading a newspaper on the internet when one of the news captured my eye. The title was: “TAP is the European airliner that gets more often delayed and that looses more luggages” (literal translation from Portuguese). Was that fact supposed to surprise me!? (I’m being ironic of course). All the flights that I did with TAP none have left at the right time, though sometimes they did arrive almost on time. How is that possible?! They fly at a higher speed, but at the expenses of a lower efficiency of fuel. So, in the end the company is losing something with that.

Then I continue reading the article and it says that the Association of European Airliners made a study to analyze some aspects of the European Airliners (the study includes 26 airliners). The conclusions of that study consist of tables that show the percentage of flights that depart on time and flights that arrive on time. TAP is on the end of those tables with 59,5% of arrivals on time and 62,5% departures on time. Hmmm… this fact kind of contradicts what I’ve said before because it states that the number of flights on time on arrivals is lower than on departures… but maybe not because the universe (number of flights) that I know is very small compared with the total amount of flights of TAP. Perhaps the captains of the flights that I did preferred to arrive on time and spend more fuel. Who knows?

On this study the Luxembourgish “Luxair” is the top company with less delays followed by KLM (the company in which I flew last time). I think that I should try to choose that company more often because not only I liked a lot the trip like also the studies confirm that the company is really good. Then I think… Portugal is integrating many European directives, laws and rules and when people in Portugal complain about something wrong in Portugal there is always someone pointing to the examples in Europe and that we should do the same. Well, this could be a matter where TAP could look to their competitors on Europe in order to improve its services, don’t you think?...

Well, the study also refers another point, the percentage of loss luggage. Also in this field TAP is in the last place of the table with almost 28 luggages lost per 1000 passengers. What else can I say? It’s a shame, is what it is. Unfortunately here the examples come from countries outside the Schengen space, with “Air Malta” and “Turkish Airlines” on the top. This makes sense since they need to have tighter security measures resulting from having “closed” borders.

This is a topic in my field, that’s why I decided to bring it up. Nevertheless, it illustrates how the Portuguese society is. See you…

Emergency services in Portugal

Today (Monday), I'm going to write this post during my flight from Lisbon to Amsterdam like I did to my blog on MSN. The idea is, like I wrote on the other blog, to give better use to time when I'm travelling. Let's see if I also get inspiration for writing this time. Before, I just want to add that I'm flying again with KLM on a Boeing 737-800 and the flight has been pretty similar to the last one a couple of days ago: comfortable, with “xpto” food, a nice crew and quick boarding time (no use of bus to get from the terminal to the aircraft).

So today’s' subject, like the title suggests, is about the way emergency services are working in Portugal nowadays. A week ago, on the news of every television and newspaper's website of the country there was shown a recording first between the family and the emergency services and afterwards only between emergency services (112 operator, doctor and firefighters). Here it is a copy of the recording on "Sapo Videos"...

Unfortunately the movie is in Portuguese, but I'll explain what it shows and why I'm writing about it. I have to start saying that this movie could have been taken from a comedy show, but the sad part is that the movie is very real. The first part shows the content of the call to the 112. It's stupid the amount of questions the operator asks to the victim's family and moreover the number of times the operator ask the same questions (on different times of the call) and the time spent just to do a simple call to 112. But this is not the worst...

The second part, the first time I saw it I started laughing, but then I realized that I was listening to a actual conversation and then I was amazed... I know that Portugal has several serious problems, but such incompetency, plus the fact of human lives being at stake, was too unbelievable for me. Why!? The 112 called to a fire department and there was only a firefighter on duty that was also using is cell phone while receiving the emergency call so that you can clearly see that he's not paying attention to the call. Moreover, he asks what he has to do. Come on, didn't he received training for doing his work on an emergency situation!? Oh, and when the operator is giving him the number of the emergency registration, he answers that he doesn't have anything to write. How can just a jackass like that be working as a firefighter?

After a certain point, the operator decides to call another fire department to quickly try dispatching an ambulance. The fire department, she called was on the next town, but again it had only a firefighter as well. With such incompetency shown so far, more one stopped surprising me.

At some point they found a way to solve the situation by making the second firefighter call others to enter on duty and head with the ambulance to the place where the emergency call was made.

Some days after this news, the firefighters' services were changed so that they would be able to give assistance on new similar situations. But that doesn't change the fact that there are serious problems with the emergency services in country such as Portugal, a country in Europe and member of the EU. Part of me still can´t believe that the video is real.

This is just something that I wanted to share with you that I think is cause of concern, specially for the people living in Portugal away from cities, because the call is made for fire departments of small villages or at least, really small towns (you can see where the place is at http://www.castedo.eu/googlemaps.htm ). Bye...

Prof. Ronald Slingerland

Initially I thought of putting this post in my personal blog, but then I realized that wouldn’t be fair to this great teacher of TU Delft. Oh, but I definitely had to write something about Prof. Slingerland because I will remember him as one of the best teachers that I had my entire life.

Prof. Slingerland died Friday, October 19, 2007 along with TU Delft’s Prof. Poppe de Lange, involved in a tragic accident when their plane crashed into another small aircraft in Lelystad. He was (only) 46 years old when it happened.

During this week I have spoken to the friend of mine João that gave me more details about the accident. He told me that the Lelystad is an uncontrolled aerodrome so that explains in part how could the two aircrafts collide. He also told me that from the collision one of the aircrafts lost part of its tail and crashed. This was the aircraft were the two teachers were. The other one had damage in the landing gear but it could perform an emergency landing and thus the occupants survived the accident. I don’t know how to put this, but why didn’t faith spare also those two great men?

I didn’t know Professor Lange so I’ll keep writing only about Prof. Slingerland. It’s fair to say that he will be sadly missed by his family, his friends and even by his colleagues of TU Delft. And even the aerospace industry loses because he was one of the few people that were considered a reference on Preliminary and Conceptual Design of Aircrafts. I want to take this opportunity to express my sympathy to those you knew him well and lived closely with him.

From the few times that I had the opportunity to spend with him, I can say that he was my favorite teacher of TU Delft and he was the person that I went talk first when I needed some opinion or advice about the faculty or even about aerospace in general. He always tried to be available and have patience to listen to me every time. He was also an enthusiastic of all matters related to aeronautics and thus that was reflected on his way of living and on the way he taught.

It’s still strange to me that he’s gone forever since I had a meeting with him in the week in which he died, so I can still see his face and imagine him in his office. It’s very sad that this has happened.

At last, I just want to add that I’ll do my best in my thesis (he would have been one of my thesis’ coordinators) so that he would be proud to be my teacher and coordinator.

This is my homage to a great man that was Ronald Slingerland…

Dutch language

One of these days I was wondering about languages since I am learning some words and expressions in Dutch during my internship and due to the fact that everyone at the company where I’m doing the internship is constantly speaking Dutch and I feel kind of apart because I can’t follow the conversations.

Well, the “challenge” that I want to put in the blog this week is very simple: what do you think about the Dutch language compared with other ones? Is it more difficult or easier to learn? …

The opinions that I’ve heard so far are for all kinds… I’ve heard Dutch people saying that Dutch is more difficult than German, for example, because of the innumerous exceptions of rules, as well people who doesn’t speak Dutch as native language saying that it is a not so difficult language.

I’m learning Dutch and only know a tiny bit of the language but I don’t consider it as strange and hard as I initially thought it was. Until now I’ve learnt the days of the week, the months, the numbering system, the time and some other general expressions as, for example, saying goodbye to someone. The hardest part of the language is the way some letters are said, like the sound of ‘g’ is ‘rrr’ or ‘ch’ is ‘rrxx’…

On the numbers the major difference is that they say one and twenty instead of twenty one. On the days and months there are only small differences, as well on saying the time, although they say half to six instead of half past five, but that is easy to remember.

Now, let’s see if this time my appeal is heard and someone gives his/her opinion…

Politicians…

A week ago, more or less, I received an e-mail with a link to a video on “YouTube” that showed a recent reaction of a known Portuguese politician. Well, the video was about Santana Lopes, a politician from the right wing that is known for his night life and appearances in tabloid magazines. He was president of a soccer club, he was mayor of the Portuguese city “Figueira da Foz” and he was also Prime-minister of Portugal for some months. He was demitted from Prime-minister by the President of the Republic because of the way he was conducting the Government and leading the country (Portugal). From all that I’ve said you can now imagine what kind of person he is and his ideals and principles.

The content of the video showed that he was giving an interview to talk about what was happening in the party that he is member and then the journalist that was conducting the interview interrupted him to give special news. Well, the news was the arrival of the Portuguese coach José Mourinho and saying that he just wanted that the journalists left him alone. This news took more or less three minutes.

When the broadcast returned to the main studio, Santana Lopes expressed his thoughts about what happened. He said that it was a shame that a television preferred to interrupt an interview where political problems were being discussed to film a soccer coach. He also decided to end the interview, and he did it in a calm but decided way. I think his reaction was correct and that make him be a little more credible to me.

However, this was a feeling that lasted only some days because I heard that his reaction on that day was not in accordance with his reactions in the past. Apparently, he was the cause for interruptions in the television’s broadcast in the past, when he was for example president of a soccer club and he was happy to be the center of the attentions at those times. Well, he can’t blame now for the attitude of the television since he agreed with that attitude in the past.

And now he’s being criticized because of his reaction on that day because that put him on the center of stage like he likes and liked in the past. He should have been coherent with his past…


PS: As a comment for my post of the “Portuguese Airshow 2007”, one of these days a friend of mine João, who is starting the course to become a pilot and thus is a reliable source, told me that the two pilots on the aircraft that supposedly almost let one of the wings of an Airbus A310 touched the ground were two very experienced pilots from TAP that spent many hours in a flight simulator practicing for that maneuver. In other words, this answer the post: it was planned and therefore an “awesome maneuver”.

PS2: Here's the video on "YouTube" that I watched.

Motorcycling

The topic for this post is a comment about one of the news that I read another day. The news was in Portuguese but I’ll translate it to English:

“Ridding motorcycle (in Portugal) is the easiest way to die on the road, while walking is the second dangerous way of motion. 440 motorcyclists out of 100 million die doing a trip of one hour.”

The data was given by a Portuguese Institute related to the roads but I consider that they only tried to give a bad impression of motorcycling. I’ll explain better...

In one of the courses that I attended in Aerospace taught me that there are several ways of measuring the safety of an aircraft, especially when referring to commercial airliners. It can be number of crashes per number of flights, it can be number of passengers injured or killed per total of passengers carried, it can be number of crashes per hour of flight, etc. There are many ways of doing that and whatever the one we choose than the airplane can be the safest mean of transportation or not. The same applies to the news I transcribed.

As anyone can easily see, the motorcycle is a faster mean of transportation than, for example, a car because it can easily reach higher speeds and can pass between the cars when there is a traffic jam. And also everyone knows that for bigger trips the risk of having an accident gets bigger. So, in each hour of trip, in general a bike does a bigger trip than a car and therefore there is a higher risk of having a crash. Also when a motorcyclist has a crash, usually it is severe injury if not death.

In the end, that news was only to scare people about motorcycling but I think they are being non-sense by doing that. I think that, for example, inside the cities a good mean of transportation is the scooter because it is economic, fast, low pollutant and easy to park since it fits in every corner. But if people are scared with bikes, this idea can never be put to practice.

I am not trying to say motorcycles are safer than other transports, but I think they aren’t as dangerous as news like this make believe.

Portugal - Serbia…

This week I will write about only one event that although being a couple of weeks old I think it is still of interest.
The subject is about the incidents after the soccer game of Portugal against Serbia, in which the Portuguese coach Scolari tried to punch a Serbian player. Right after the match, the reaction of the Portuguese coach was very disappointing because he claimed that he didn’t tried to attack the player and that he was just trying to push away the Serbian player because he tried to attack a Portuguese player. Well, the images show what really happened and it’s sad that he did that.
Afterwards, according to what I heard in the news, I found out that what he did was a reaction after the Serbian player insulted him and tried to hit him. As a penalty, the FIFA decided to suspend Scolari for four matches and the Serbian player for two.
My comments to this event are simple: Scolari shouldn’t have done what he did in any case whatever were the circumstances. And I do agree with the punishment of FIFA. He is a public figure and therefore he has special duties to accomplish. One of them is serving as an example to other people and to show what kind of people we (Portuguese) are. I felt ashamed with what he did even taking into account the fact that he later on did apologize for his action and attitude. He has to show more maturity and more cold blood in this kind of situations and for that reason he has no excuses.
The aspect I don’t agree in all of this is that the Serbian player got a less punishment. He did wrong and his actions were similar to the Portuguese coach, since even the referee told that the Serbian player did insult and tried to attack Scolari. I don’t understand why this happened, but the Serbian player should have equal penalty as Scolari.

Some secondary concerns about Abortion

First of all, I want to be completely clear about my stand about this subject: I am in favor that abortion shouldn’t be considered a crime.
After this statement, let me talk about the abortion contextualized with the Portuguese reality. Last February there was a referendum to find out what was the Portuguese people’s opinion about the Portuguese law about abortion. The result was that the majority of the people who went voting wanted to end with the criminalization of the abortion.
What I do not agree is that the Portuguese government legislated on the subject. It was only a matter of taking out the law that makes abortion be considered a crime. Instead, the government legislated and gave priority to the abortion. This means, for example, that in a hospital where there is a free room and it is scheduled an abortion, if appears for the same time a pregnant women giving to birth, the pregnant women can’t go to that room. Or the hospital has other available rooms, or the pregnant women will give birth probably in the ambulance because the ambulance won’t reach on time other hospital. I consider the idea wrong. I also disagree that abortion is completely free, when a pregnant women has to pay her stay in the hospital for and after the birth. To be fair or it is free for everyone or everyone pays.
One last point is that since the Portuguese people is getting aged and the number of births is decreasing over the years, why not investing on supporting the women who do not desire the child to carry to the end the pregnancy and then the child would be given to adoption. Also the adoption process had to be quicker and bureaucracy decreased. That way we would invest in increasing births while fighting unwanted pregnancies.
Can I hear other opinions please :P