Week of May 31: Brazil, Pomodoro, Rome, and Sociology of beauty
Short Treatise on Brazilian politics
President Jair Bolsonaro is the most controversial figure of recent Brazilian History. Former Presidents Lula da Silva, Dilma Rousseff, and Fernando Henrique Cardoso never sank this low in the politics of running the country. The problem is that Presidents of Brazil have legitimacy because the majority of the voters chose them. One cannot simply detest Heads of State and make them go away because Presidents have loyal followers — the raison d’être of this small article.
Years of alienation and poor education fostered by a dirigist State created a monster. Brazil has roughly 30% of its voting population set on supporting a raving lunatic, our current President. Another 30% is dead set on propping up the person who made the current political mess a reality, the former President Lula da Silva. Given that the political center (Center Right and Left) is too hurt by continuous bullying from both loonie sides, it seems that no good will ever come out of Brazil. Perhaps every Brazilian airport should receive foreigners with the message that Dante and Virgil found when they arrived in Hell:
“Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.”
Work
As I mentioned last week, I am a self-improvement geek. Since working from home has been quite a challenge, I decided to re-implement the Pomodoro time management technique in my routine. I do 10 cycles of 55 minutes with 30-minute breaks between them. Each cycle has a small 5-minute break in its middle. In the days that I used the Pomodoro routine, I had excellent productivity, and I felt on route to professional fulfillment.
I focused on working with RDKit in DOCK6. I re-wrote the whole code that I had already written, and I seem to have a system that works pretty well. There is still a problem, though: nitrogen-containing molecules can be tricky to deal with, especially those with nitro groups, heterocycles, or azide derivatives. The fix inside the RDKit source code was not very useful.
Book recommendation
I finally finished “The Inheritance of Rome” by Chris Wickham. This excellent book shows how the peoples and institutions changed after the fall of the Western Roman Empire. I enjoy Wickham’s narrative because it has a materialistic bent but does not keep us apart from interesting and peculiar historical figures. It is quite a large book, and I listened to it in its audio version. I liked it so much that I am considering buying a hardcopy.
Podcast recommendation 1
Emperors of Rome is a lovely podcast produced by Matt Smith, from La Trobe University (Australia). It regularly features conversations about the Culture and History of the Roman Empire. It has a slower pace than Mike Duncan’s History of Rome and Patrick Wyman’s The Fall of Rome. Still, it is a lot more thorough and rigorous with the information presented. The episode which I recommend today is about Deification, a process that turned dead emperors into gods. Matt Smith interviews Rhiannon Evans, Senior Lecturer in Classics from La Trobe University, and they discuss how Deification became a thing Romans would do.
I find it particularly fascinating because Romans and their cultural ancestors — Greeks, and Egyptians — had the habit of turning some of their rulers into deities. At one end, the Pharaoh was a living god for Egyptians, while only the mortal children of the gods could get divine status for the Greeks. The one notable exception that might have inspired the Romans was Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king that became a living god by virtue of conquering Egypt. I wonder if Jesus Christ was turned into God by christians due to the influence of the Roman State and Eastern mysticism.
Podcast recommendation 2
My second podcast recommendation is the Ashley Mears interview on Conversations with Tyler. Tyler Cowen is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University and is a pioneer in communicating economics and other ideas through the internet. The conversations he has with his guests don’t usually involve his field of study. Ashley Mears is a Professor of Sociology at Boston University and formerly a fashion model who wrote an ensemble of books on fashion culture.
This episode is noteworthy. It starts by discussing the high-end club culture in New York City: very wealthy men partying and hooking up with models as a display of power. Ashley and Tyler debate the lives of fashion models, how they get into this glamorous life, the costs and benefits, and the different beauty standards in Fashion. There’s also an interesting conversation about beauty standards across different social classes. Very interesting podcast.
