Week of June 7: living, working, blogging
Living
I had a very fortunate week. I had video calls with two of my great American friends, and I was somewhat productive at work. I cooked three delicious rotating meals — tacos, Mediterranean lamb pasta, and Chinese-style pork — and I enjoyed every meal I had. I just realized, however, that I am eating more calories than I am spending, which can be a problem in the long run, so I decided to refocus my dietary tactics.
As usual, Brazil is continuously on my mind: the President of Brazil is a notorious anti-science advocate and is a very efficient bad decisionmaker. The COVID-19 crisis will get worse, and there is absolutely nothing that enlightened citizens can do. I only hope nothing happens to my friends and family.
Working
It has been a great week. I presented the results of one of my projects and had the opportunity to work more freely with my DOCK6 — RDKit interface. It is still a little bit elusive, but I don’t have the same difficulties with C++ that I had one year ago: I’m almost proficient. My problem is to find an efficient way of coding chemical intuition.
Blogging
I am a little bit concerned with my future. I don’t know if I will have a job in Brazil after my postdoc ends, and I cannot stay in America because of something called section 212(e). In theory, I could get it waived, but it would involve paying an ungodly amount of money to the Brazilian government. I am not rich, and Brazil is a country proud of making the ladder to riches harder for anyone who doesn’t belong to its plutocrat elite. Blogging has been helping me deal with these pent up feelings. The experience of distance education also gave me some inspiration to start a semi-scientific blog. “Seu Professor de Química” is a Portuguese-language blog where I post some texts that I have prepared over time, along with some curiosities and teaching materials. Some of the posts are old Quora answers that I wrote over the last two years; some are entirely new. I am currently planning an article featuring four researchers that I believe are pushing the boundaries of Computational Chemistry: Alán Aspuru-Guzik, Adrián Roitberg, John Chodera, and Lee Cronin. It is an excellent opportunity to update myself while preparing blog posts.
Book recommendation
I will recommend two books by the same author, “Emperor: a new life of Charles V” and “Imprudent King: a new life of Philip II,” two biographies written by the Historian George Parker. I am part of the crew that does romanticize monarchies a bit mainly because we daydream about being nobles in a long-gone time. While I understand that I would have probably been a peasant on a wheat farm and have no illusions about reinstating monarchies in our Era, I think the history of kings and queens has a lot to teach us.
Charles V was the most powerful monarch of Renaissance Europe. His domains included current-day Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxemburg, Southern Italy, Lombardy, Austria, Slovenia, Czechia, Slovakia, Sardinia, Sicily, parts of France, parts of Poland, parts of Croatia, and the newly conquered Americas. His motto was “Plus Ultra,” meaning “further beyond,” and throughout his life, Charles tried to fulfill his vision. The emperor’s life is a tale of many victories and defeats, of hubris and religious piety. Charles did his best when thinking strategically and did his worse when believing that God was on his side. That’s a good lesson for our contemporary politicians.
Philip II, son, and heir of Charles V, only inherited from his father Spain, the Americas, the Kingdom of Naples, the Duchy of Milan, Franche-Comté, and all the Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands. Charles’ brother, Ferdinand, inherited Austria and the remaining domains. Later on, he added Portugal to his crowns. Philip could have been a great king if it weren’t for his constant micromanaging of the affairs of his realms. This bad habit led him to lose Holland, Zeeland, and multiple northern Netherlander provinces to rebels. It made him insist on sending the Spanish Armada to England during a bad season. Another good lesson for our Contemporary World.
Podcast recommendation 1
“The Economist Asks” is a podcast where The Economist’s Anne McElvoy takes the driving seat and interviews multiple personalities of the political and cultural world. This week’s episode was a very enlightening interview with Jeffrey Sachs, the man responsible for creating the plans that transformed many Eastern European countries in successful cases of transitions from state-planned to market economies. Sachs defends the record of Globalization and states the truth: it has more upsides than downsides. The crucial message that he left was that the markets need to be freer, but Governments have the obligation of providing for their populations. Only in this way, a fully globalized world can prosper. Corrupt plutocracies are not sustainable in the long run.
