domingo, 23 de março de 2014

The city of the future - The reality is comming

Masdar - United Arab Emirates
Songdo - South Korea


 The "current" cities of the future:

                                                   
                                                             Migaa - Kenya
Let's immagine a city without any kind of polution, wgere no one can be late due to trafic or strikes, where the children can play freely on the streets and everyone feels safe to go out at any hour. Basically, a city whitout problems: a perfect city.
This is how the city in the future will look like. Or at least how it should look like. In this article I will not talk about how the possible city will look like in the future if the current situation will continue, but how the city of the future shoul look like. But unfortunatelt, as everything else, the city of the future could have a negative side with bad consequences for  the world.

The intelligent city: a way to emend the nistakes of present cities

Currently we associate many problems to our cities. These problems affect the quality of live of their inhabitants. So, the main purpose of the intelligente city (called this way because of the way the city will work) is to provide a good way of living for its inhabitants, since the main purpose of any inhaboitant is his own welfare.
One of the worst characteristics of a city is the traffic. In the intelligent city this should not happen, because the public transports will be a very attractive way of traveling. For that, the current problems related to the public transports will disappear: the quality of the infrastructres, the schedule and the net of the service. If the public transports can offer infrasctructures with good quality (buses, trains, subways among others) with schedules that satisfy the costumers' needs and can cover all the city, most of the citizens don't have the need to use their own cars, reducing the traffic and the air polution.
About the polution, it's an important goal of an intelligent city the use of clean sources of energy - the renewable sources, like solar energy, water, wind - that do not pollute and after the expensive initial investment are very cheap in the future. Related to the polution is the production of waste - domestic or industrial - . A way to avoid that is to build the buildings

So, we can see so far that the intelligent city can produce its own energy and the basic goods like food and drinking water, by treating the unsafe water.
As for the outside space, the intelligent city needs to have a perfect equilibrium between buildings and the green spaces, because it's essential the preservation of the biodiversity.
As for the self-sustainability, the intelligent city needs to be able to using its resources effective and efficiently, producing, being able to produce the goods and services and the energy essential to satisfy the citizens' needs.

The challenges of creating the city of the future in our world already "constructed"

However, the ideal city of the future brings many problems and challenges. The current cities, have builds and zones that are not prepared for the requirements of these intelligente cities. And of course this historical heritage can be destroyed. Also the culture associated to any territory can be
annihilated by the futuristic cities. And of course, it will be impossible to satisfy all the citizens' needs and/or wills: an action of one citizen can easily have bad consequences on another(s).
These new cities will also create many job vacancies, which will attract many people, especially from the country, that can overcrowd the cities, increasing the unemployment (the demand for work can easily overcome the job vacancies available) and the prices (which would be already higher comparing to the current cities, in order to cover the extra costs related to the management of such "perfect" city).
And, since we can't simply destroy the big part of the current cities, the trend could be to construct the cities isolated from the rest of the world.

In a simple sentence, the ideal city of the future need to be constructed and work toward two main goals: the welfare and the sustainable development. However, the challenges and the dangers are very, and it's a possible scenario to create ghetos with more problems and the current cities.

The History of Gregorian Chant

The Gregorian Chant is the official chant of the catholic church since the Roman Rite.
It's a monocordic chant sung in unison without any instrument (musical accompaniment). Despite that today the catholic liturgy has more kind of sacred chant, it still saying that the Gregorian chant is the best way to connect the Man with God, the best way to express the prayers by the music.
an example of the one of the oldest notations of the Gregorian Chant
an example of the one of the oldest notations of the Gregorian Chant
So, let's have a brief look about the History of this chant.
First the name: it's called Gregorian thanks to the Pope Gregory (590 - 604) who colected, selected, ordered the melodies heard in teh churches these dyas, making also some of them. Around the 12th century, it started to be called as plainchant, that comes from the latin "cantus plenus".
the first songs in Gregorian derivate from the songs sang in the jewish liturgy, including influences from the polytheist religions from the Roman Empire.
Using the existing melodies, the catholic church adopted tehm using the texts specially from the Bible, but also form the tradition. Until the 9th cnetury all the songs were transmited only oraly, which means a very hard work to memorize the songs.
So, to help the singers (the monks), in the end of the 9th century, the first music sheets appeared. The different kinds of notation appeared in orser to help to sing and to improve their capacity to sing new pieces without memorize them.
In the 10th century come the sript and the Dry lines drawn. In the beginning of the 10th century it's possible to determine the position for the semitones by the introduction of two lines: one red for the "Fa" and the other yellow for the "Do", and the use of letters for the clef: "C" and "F". But the changes didn't stop there.
In the second-half of the 11th century appeared the tetragramma, and the most perfect diastemasia is achieved. With all this evolution, it becomes possible to read a piece without a master.

An example of the quadratic notation.
An example of the quadratic notation.
But, meanwhile emerges the polyphonic melodie and the Gregorian chant started to die in the end of the 13th century. The Gregorian chant emerged again in 1845 when Danjou, an organist in Paris, has found the bilingual manuscrit of Montpellier. Since then, there wew many initiatives to study the ancient pieces of Gregorian chant and to introduce them again in the liturgy, thanks to the help of many personalities like: Fr Lambillote, Don Guéranger, Don Pothier, Don A. Mocquereau, Don J. Gajard, Cardinal Pizzardo, the Popes Pius X, Pius XI and Pius XII and the monks from Solesmes that published many works about this theme.
Despite the high number of notations, the most used now is the quadratic. And, since in the time where the Gregorian was born and diffused the communications were so difficult, we can find now in Europe many kinds of ways to write the Gregorian Chant.
The most important, just because it's the most studied now, is the notation from St. Gall, that emerged in the St. Gall monastery, in a region now in Switzerland.

St. Gall Monastery

St. Gall Monastery

sexta-feira, 21 de março de 2014

Eurovision: Destination - Copenhagen 2014 (ALL SONGS)

This week the last songs were revealed. Here they are. What's your favorite?

SEMIFINAL I:

ALBANIA:
Artist - Hersi
Song - "One night's anger" (English)

ARMENIA:
Artist - Aram MP3
Song - "Not Alone" (English)

AZERBAIJAN:
Artist - Dilara Kazimova
Song - "Start a fire" (English)


ESTONIA:
Artist - Tanja
Song - "Amazing Life" (English)


ICELAND:
Artist - Pollapönk
Song - "No prejudice" (English)


LATVIA:
Artist - Aarzemnieki
Song - "Cake to bake" (English)

RUSSIA:
Artist - The Tolmachevy Sisters
Song - "Shine" (English)

SWEDEN:
Artist - Sanna Nielsen
Song - "Undo" (English)

BELGIUM
Artist - Axel Hirsoux
Song - "Mother" (English)


HUNGARY:
Artist - András Kállay-Saunders
Song - "Running" (English)


MOLDOVA:
Artist - Cristina Scarlat
Song - "Wild Soul" (English)


MONTENEGRO:
Artist - Sergej Ćetković
Song - ""Moj svijet" (Мој свијет)" (Montenegrin)


THE NETHERLANDS:
Artist - The Common Linnets
Song - "Calm After the Storm" (English)

PORTUGAL
Artist - Suzy
Song - Quero ser tua (Portuguese)


SAN MARINO
Artist - Valentina Monetta
Song - Maybe (Forse) (English)

UKRAINE:
Artist - Maria Yaremchuk
Song - Tick-tock (English)


SEMIFINAL 2

AUSTRIA
Artist - Conchita Wurst
Song - "Rise like a Phoenix" (English)


GEORGIA
Artist - The Shin and Mariko
Song - "Three Minutes to Earth" (English)


ISRAEL
Artist - Mei Finegold
Song - "Same Heart" (English, Hebrew)


LITHUANIA
Artist - Vilija Matačiūnaitė
Song - "Attention" (English)



MALTA
Artist - Firelight
Song - "Coming Home" (English)


NORWAY
Artist - Carl Espen
Song - "Silent Storm" (English)


POLAND
Artist - Donatan & Cleo
Song - "My Słowianie" (English, Polish)

BELARUS
Artist - TEO
Song - "Cheesecake" (English)

FINLAND:
Artist - Softengine
Song - "Something Better" (English)

GREECE
Artist - Freaky Fortune feat. Riskykidd
Song - "Rise Up" (English)


IRELAND
Artist - Can-Linn feat. Kasey Smith
Song - "Heartbeart" (English)

MACEDONIA
Artist - Tijana
Song - "To the Sky" (English)

ROMANIA
Artist - Paula Seling & OVI
Song - "Miracle" (English)

SLOVENIA
Artist - Tinkara Kovač
Song - Round and Round (English, Slovene)


SWITZERLAND
Artist - Sebalter
Song - Hunter of Stars (English)


BIG 5 + HOST

DENMARK
Artist - Basim
Song - "Cliche Love Song" (English)


FRANCE
Artist - TWIN TWIN
Song - "Moustache" (French)


GERMANY
Artist - Elaiza
Song - "Is it Right" (English)

ITALY
Artist - Emma Marrone
Song - La mia citta (Italian)


SPAIN
Artist - Ruth Lorenzo
Song - "Dancing in the Rain" (English, Spanish)

UNITED KINGDOM
Artist - Molly
Song - "Children of the Universe" (English)


LET'S START THE SOW!!!!!

segunda-feira, 17 de março de 2014

The freedom of press... the freedom to live

Font: International Politics and http://rsf.org/index2014/en-index2014.php

The degree of freedom of the press can say many things about the conditions in a specific country. More even than we can immagine at a first analysis.
And for this scenario we can see that the world situation is not so good as the most optimistic viewers could immagine. And if we associate the freedom of the press to the economic position some countries have in the global context, the scenario could be even more worrying.
But we first need to see what is and what are the implications related to the degree of freedom of the press. We can see the freedom of the press as the possibility of the press to write, publish or show to the people, their vision of the what is happening in the homeland and in all the world, without any concerns about possible punishments. This means for example to turn on the TV at news time and see the news about anything about my home country or about another country, and see the information the most similar possible to the reality, without any deliberate interference to change the reality. The same if I decide to read a newspaper, to listen the radio or any other way to receive any kind of information.
From a country where the freedom is higher, this could see something so simple and basic that it's difficult to imagine a violation of this elementar people's right. The people must have the right to receive the real and accurate information about any subject. As citizens and members of the society, using the local, regional and global goods, making their own contribution for the society's wealth and welfare, the people have of course the right to receive the information in good quality about anything they want to know. And from the side of the people that provide the information, the same rules can be used. The people must have the freedom of search, make and turn out public the information. The right to know, it's seen as a basic right that anyone should have. Because in the countries where the degree of freedom is higher, only with an access of good and reliable information, the citizens can make the best choices and be more productive, efficient and effective for the society and economy. Only with the right information, the citizens can achieve their goals - so, the individual rights are above of the common rights in these countries - .
Let's see the other side. The countries with the lower degree of freedom of the press, have their own reasons which for them are the right ones. If the information is available for the public without having first an official authority to analyse it and to eliminate some information, or only parts of it, or the way it is transmitted, the people can make the wrong decisions, can be less productive, less efficient and effective, and can be a threat for the Government, the public institutions and for the society and the country itself. So, the common interest is above everything else.
I can present thousands of arguments defending and rejecting both ways of thinking. But we need to analyse something else.
A lack of information will never teach the people how to do the best choices and the countries with the higher degree of freedom are the most developed countries, with a higher respect of the human rights, and where the welfare is higher and the peace and institutional stability is higher.
And the freedom of the press has also an impact in the economic activity, in the policies decisions, in the public system, in the cultural, ideological and values' changes,
So, it seems that there must be a positive relation between degree of freedom and development. But this map shows a concerning scenario.
Let's analyse it by parts:
- Most developed countries: all of them, Western Europe, North America, Japan, Australia and New Zeland, are in the best two positions of the scale. And despite the problems, many of them related to the economic crisis, or politic misunderstoods, the trend would be to itensify the increase in the degree of freedom.
- Emmerging economies / especially the BRIC's: it's impossible of course to analyse our world without taking into account the countries' economic role. As I explained here, the emerging economies, especially the BRIC's have an important role in the global economy, and the importance will continue to increase in the future. So, seeing that in almost all of these countries, especially the BRIC's an the emerging economies in Asia, that have been increasing their power in the global context, the degree of freedom is very low, is a matter of concern of global institutions.
- Less developed countries: especially Africa, this map shows the opposite side - that a low degree of freedom is an impediment for a healthy growth and development of the country and society.
What lesson can we take from this map? That the world has along way to go, and that the threat of a reverse in the improvement is a constant presence, which is harming the people's welfare and quality of life.