The Carioca Torpedo Biker

During distress, the human brain enters overdrive and collects all the information it can get, so we can make a better decision and stay alive. During this process, we perceive time as moving slower, but it is just a memory effect because of the excess of information absorbed in a short period.

As the cloudy sky not only didn't alleviate the hot weather, but made it even more uncomfortable in a secluded neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Taiana wanted a soda. She wasn't used to this climate anymore, as she was only visiting her parents, so Elmer, her husband, came for the rescue! "Be careful, my dear" she uttered "for my uncle's bicycle has no brakes".

And so the expedition began to the market and the first obstacle was a slope. Elmer wanted to conquer the slope with the bike, so he bravely pedaled uphill until the peak, taking as prize the easy motion downwards it provided. But the bike started to gain too much speed and he had to make a decision, for in front of him was a brick wall, turning right his path would pass through some kids playing ball on the street. On the left side, there was a car entering the neighborhood. What would happen? As time seemed to slow down, the calculations began: What would add up to the least amount of damage? What would be the moral decision? Would he be able to live with the consequences of his decision? The answer to all of those questions settled his course of action.

The calm neighborhood almost didn't even notice the bike soaring like a missile down the road, directly hitting the brick wall with all force! Everybody turned to see a semi dead broken man, victim of his own poor decisions, but that wasn't what they got. Instead, there was a broken bike and an intact man standing beside it, with a weary look on his face. Not even a scratch! An old lady that saw the impact from some meters stared at him as if she was seeing a ghost!

"Are you OK?!" asked her astonished. Elmer didn't even answer. He was too worried as that bike wasn't his! Looking at it, the damage wasn't as bad as the sound of the impact made it seem. The front wheel was busted, but that was it. When the bike hit the curb it lost speed so he could jump and land safely before the crash.

Rock the Police

Spring, 2011. Erin filmed his brother Matt and his cousin Billy while they made a guitar duel. But it was a somewhat unorthodox duel, as they were reenacting a slow motion medieval sword fight with the guitars as weapons, planning to speed it up in post production. Matt's character was the defendant, protecting his "castle", a two storey house with a large balcony and a long lateral rampart. He was wearing a "suit of armor" composed of a wool jacket and a hat.

One of the most dramatic scenes portraied Matt chasing Billy along the rampart with a sideways climatic duel where one tried to shove the other off to the first floor! An epic scene to watch, but ridiculous to make. The problem was that somebody saw Matt, a guy with a black hat, exiting the house by the second floor window carrying a guitar.

While Matt defended Billy's blows driving him backwards towards the street, a police car discretely stopped on the other side of the road and one policeman started looking at the scene, where two fat guys struck each other with guitars while another fatty filmed them. Billy paused the production and respectfully asked the police officer if there were any problem. "What are you doing there?" Asked him authoritatively. "We're a rock band, we're making a video". With a combination of amusement and frustration, making the funniest face expression possible, he said "Your video got me a call!"

Four more cars arrived,  a swarm of twenty policemen with machine guns and rifles filled the street moving all around, some laughing, some serious, some angry. As it is their procedure, the first policeman got Billy's ID to look for some previous record, but there was nothing to be found as the squeaky clean nerd had never done anything remotely wrong in his entire life.

"You were recording a rock video? You tape stuff on the cemetery, right?"

That somebody called the police because three fat idiots tried to film a funny clip.

Without any police record, the cops just went away, leaving behind an interrupted film, a scared neighborhood and a story to tell.

The final video was completed a week later and it's available on YouTube today. Viewer discretion is advised.

https://youtu.be/dxB1eCSNRyU

The Oyster Incident

Salty water touched the shore as people enjoyed the summer on Tumble Beach, in Brazil. Two brothers played in the water to cool their bodies down, as the sun was particularly hot this day. Wilhelm and Christof jumped and dove through the strong waves always paying attention to not end up too far into the ocean. And so they did, controlling the distance responsibly, not letting the water go past their chest. But as it often is, they forgot to account a simple factor - lateral displacement. Tumble Beach is well known for their underwater holes that act as traps to unaware tourists. More and more to the right, the distracted brothers found themselves deep enough in the water to not be able to step on the beach floor without submerging their heads! And the waves were strong enough to overcome their efforts to swim to safety! Even worse, there wasn't any beach left in that direction, as large rocks filled the shoreline! Wilhelm, whose large body was not prepared to prolonged physical efforts, wasn't able to maintain himself over water for too long, so Christof, who was a lot smaller, pulled him up a few times, as desperation tried to take over. Observing their unusual struggle, a couple of surfers offered help and dragged them both closer to the shore, where they could walk. Phew! Finally this was over and... Whoosh! Tidal waves started to throw them on the rocks! They grabbed and held on, but alas! the rocks were covered in oysters! Sharp inch-long oysters that pierced their skin while the waves threw them around again and again! Now, Christof, stuck in a hole, started to get scared! Wilhelm, climbing over the rock, slicing his flesh on the oysters, tried to save his brother, but it was no use as the waves threw them around as if the sea wanted to claim them back as her own! What would be of the brothers? Here comes the surfers for the rescue again! and Wilhelm let Christof go first, as a lighter body got thrown around more easily by the waves! With their feet on dry sand again, the brothers counted their blessings and ran off to treat their wounds, as their legs were covered by slices and blood, a little reminder of the respect the ocean demanded.

Faceplant

A beautiful and warm evening composes the background of the scene as a 7 year-old boy gets home with his mother by bus. As the bus stops and opens its doors, a fire starts to burn in the boy's heart and he jumps off of it, landing perfectly on the sidewalk. The two meter jump feels like a world record on the sparkle from the eyes of a curious little man. This was the first physics experiment of an amateur scientist.

Five years later, the results of that research were all but lost when the now 11 year-old remembers his greatest achievement riding the bus with his mom again. The memory of the thrill comes back to him followed by an unstoppable desire to feel it one more time. On a busy boulevard, trying to save time, the bus driver opens the door a few seconds before arriving at the bus stop. The opportunity is given and the boy jumps from his mother's side towards the freedom of the outdoors! The parabolical trajectory perfectly connects when the jump is done. The young scientist forgot to account for one simple factor: momentum. An object in motion tends to remain in motion and the 20km/h human body connects his face with the asphalt, and continues it's forward trajectory surfing the road with his nose and forehead.

Another experiment with an interesting result: Do not jump off a moving bus.

Humility vs Arrogance

Imagine: You are in a fancy restaurant for a romantic date. The French waiter delicately handles you the menu so you can order the desired dish between these two options: cow fertilizer or cockroach salad. Which one would you choose? Which dish would you like the most? We do that kind of choices every day, not having a third not absurd option, save abstinence.  

In silence, I've witnessed absurd debates charged by improvised and unfounded arguments. What people (have the audacity to) call "music" nowadays is closer to growls and rumbles to actual music and, listening to the arguments of the "oppression of the brazilian funk by the modern country music" or how the brazilian funker is "unrightfully marginalized", being compared to tattooed people a few decades ago, make evident most people's complete alienation from the real world that treat their microscopic perception of reality as irrefutable truths, independent from what is shown by their own eyes and ears.

"Brazillian funk is culture", they say. "You're prejudiced!", they say, sometimes only with the eyes. Culture is a word which has lost its meaning. Think of a "cult" person (ie. full of culture) and compare him with the dude that, crowning himself a regent over the city's night life,  goes around the neighborhoods making car alarms go off and obliterating the peace of those whose only sin was to live on his path. Brazilian funk isn't a kind of culture yet to be recognised and accepted by a future society, it is a cultural and intelectual dismantling caused by two types of criminal (in association with each other): primarily the leader of drug trafficking organizations inside Brazil's favelas, almost gods in their own eyes, that invest on these pseudo-singers and use their shows as money laundry, also enjoying the apology to the use of their product and the violence to their enemies that the popularization of this fenomenon provides; and, secondarily, the corrupt government, a self proclaimed enlightened elite ready to decide humanity's future, with the goal of imbecilizing the population, turning them into complete idiots easily thrown towards any direction. The absurd investment made by the government to the so called "university country musicians" also contributes to this, for even though those aren't as much of a fecal secretion as the previously mentioned genre, they revel on idiotizing lowly vocabulary and immoral themes. The popularization of those two (un)musical genres throws the people in an ever deep abyss of futility, egotism, promiscuity and alienation from where they'll probably never escape.

We don't even have to consider the extremes to see that dismantling all over the world. Once I had an argument with a student that clearly examplifies the modern youngster's mindset. This one criticized, rejected and rudely insulted my teaching method when I used a song from an especific genre to show him some practical English, extolling his own (questionable) taste over Mozart, Beethoven or Vivaldi. My reaction, driven by love to my calling and my students, was to make evident his misteken point of view. Impartially, I gathered popular music in a single "heap" making clear that what is classical is always superior to what is popular and showed him how deeply the statements "I enjoy it" and "it is good" differ from one another. What makes us grow as humans is true art, what entertains us just that, something fun, a silly thing we use to rest our thoughts. The reaction? Becoming a former student in a matter of weeks, the arrogance of which I was the object unrightfully got attributed, by cognitive parallax, to me!

And that consistently goes on.

I love to learn, I study for pleasure. Be it the bible, physics or cosmology, I read, I learn and I feel fulfilled. On the other hand, I am fully conscious of how much I do not know (truth be told: I know nothing). But when I am capable of helping someone with the little knowledge I gathered, I'm labeled arrogant.

What can we conclude from that?

An alienated person with unfounded and improvised opinions, that happens to be the same as everybody else's,  is humble. Considers himself an unbeatable and absolutely humble intellectual that, when losing an argument, travels through time and changes history transforming himself into the victim of the arrogant haughty knows-it-all that "doesn't know how to play".

The one who recognises his own ignorance and searches for knowledge, leaving behind his prejudiced opinions do make room for the truth, is the arrogant. The monster that comes to humiliate the poor bastard that, even thouh he knows everything (for he was given all the information about all things on his birth), loses the debate to his monstrous arrogance.

I do my best to be a humble person, but thats probably arrogance from my part.

Complex Insignificance

From time to time, we humans contemplate our own existence. Inadvertently or consciously, this process changes the individual. This change comes from the exchange of the point of view one takes in relation to reality. I confess that, for two years, I have spent more time than I should have getting through these moments, but the experience was enlightening. I will highlight two of them that exemplifies the mindsets of those observing the universe:

1 - Insignificance

What is the universe made of? There are countless solutions to this enigma, but, if the intent is to comprehend the composition of the celestial elements, the answer is awe-inspiring! Planets, stars and galaxies! Almost everything in the universe is at a not very known state of matter called plasma (that occurs when gaseous elements experience extreme temperatures to the point of separating their electrons from the nuclei of their atoms, transforming them into loose ions floating into a crazy cosmic electron soup.) Behold the aether, raw material of the stars! Such stars that almost totally compose the night sky. Their sizes are so extraordinarily gigantic that we are literally incapable of conceiving it. Even if we use the pseudo-concept artifice of visualizing our planet from the outside, we are barely able to understand the distance between the celestial bodies. We are insignificant when compared to our planet, which is insignificant compared to our sun, which is also insignificant compared to the star called UY Scuti (with approximately 1500 times our Sun's mass) and this is just one of a number that, by the contemplation of our human eyes, extends to infinity - the population of stars in our night sky. The united gravitational influence of these colossi holds the galaxy together as a single structure immeasurably gigantic to our human standards! By themselves, the combined gravitational influence of the galaxies also keeps larger structures in place, the clusters. All of this, interacting together, assemble a gargantuan organised structure of which we see an infinitesimal part: the universe! Compared to all of this, what are we? The word “nothing” appears to be an understatement.

2 - Complexity

What is the aether? Plasma! Chemicals on an extreme state of particle excitement. The stars are composed of an astounding quantity of hydrogen and helium that, due to the extreme conditions of their cores (and a little help from Quantum Tunneling), fuse themselves into heavier and heavier elements. In spite that, by the end of its life, a large enough star explodes creating and throwing extremely heavy elements into the universe, its initial structure is incredibly simple, being made only of an uncountable amount of the simplest atoms we know. But, how about us? The comparison of the complexities is inversely proportional to the comparison of might! Our composition is so complex, so delicately balanced for the existence of life, it obfuscates the stars! Of course it doesn't change their size and might, but we, insignificant human beings, are complex to the point of have been trusted with a cognition that allows us to contemplate and appreciate the colossal stars, that, as powerful as they might be, will never contemplate us back.

Yes, if being powerful colossi is stunning and reverent, the capacity to conceive and appreciate such qualities is as impressive as having them! If we think of the universe as a painting made by a talented Artist, we can imagine his appreciation for the stars and galaxies that composes most part of the work, but we can also imagine the attention and care dedicated to the composition of the delicate humans, “mere details” to the the general context, but with such complexity that they could be put on equal grounds with the rest of the painting.

The universe is indescribably wondrous. But our cognitive capacity to conceive and contemplate it makes each one of us as vast as stars.

Complexa Insignificância

De tempos em tempos o ser humano contempla sua própria existência. Inadvertida ou conscientemente, este processo muda o indivíduo. Esse mudança vem da alteração do ponto de vista que ele toma da realidade. Confesso que, no período de dois anos, passei por estes momentos um pouco mais do que deveria, mas a experiência foi iluminadora. Focar-me-ei em duas delas que exemplificam muito bem o estado mental daquele que se propõe  a estudar o universo:

1 - Insignificância

Do que é feito o universo? Existem diversas soluções para este enigma, mas se a intenção for compreender a composições dos elementos celestes, a resposta é assustadora! Planetas, estrelas, galáxias! Quase tudo no universo está em um não tão conhecido estado da matéria, o plasma (que ocorre quando um elemento no estado gasoso passa por uma temperatura tão extrema que os elétrons se desprendem dos núcleos dos átomos, transformando aquele elemento em íons soltos boiando em uma sopa de elétrons enlouquecidos. Eis o aether, matéria prima de estrelas! Estrelas estas que compõem quase a totalidade do preenchimento do céu noturno. Seu tamanho é tão extraordinariamente gigantesco que somos literalmente incapazes de conceber seu tamanho. Mesmo utilizando o artifício de uma pseudo-concepção do tamanho de nosso planeta visto por fora, ainda assim mal conseguimos compreender a distância entre os astros. Nós somos insignificantes comparados com nosso lindo planeta, que é insignificante comparado à nossa estrela, que é insignificante comparado à maior estrela que conhecemos, UY Scuti (tendo aproximadamente 1.500 vezes o raio do nosso sol). E esta é uma de um número que, contemplado por nossos olhos, estende-se ao infinito da população de astros no céu noturno.  A influência gravitacional destes colossos unida prende a galáxia como uma única estrutura imensuravelmente gigantesca para nossos padrões humanos! Por sua vez, a influência gravitacional das galáxias unida também mantém estruturas maiores no lugar, chamados aglomerados. Tudo isso, interagindo entre si, forma uma imensa estrutura organizada da qual vemos uma provavelmente infinitésima parte, o universo. Perto disso tudo o que somos nós? Comparando-me com o universo, a palavra "nada" não parece fazer jus.

2 - Complexidade

O que é o aether? Plasma! Um aglomerado de elementos químicos em um estado extremo de excitação de suas partículas. As estrelas são compostas de uma quantidade imensa de hidrogênio e hélio que, devido às condições extremas em seus núcleos (e um empurrãozinho do tunelamento quântico), fundem-se em elementos mais e mais pesados. Apesar de que, no final de sua vida uma estrela grande o suficiente explode, criando e lançando elementos pesadíssimos universo a fora, sua estrutura inicial é extremamente simples, sendo composta apenas de uma quantidade incontável dos átomos mais simples que conhecemos. Mas, e nós? A comparação da complexidade é inversamente proporcional à comparação do poder! A nossa composição é tão complexa, tão delicadamente equilibrada para que haja a vida, que neste respeito ofuscamos as estrelas! Claro que isso não muda seu tamanho e seu poder, mas nós, insignificantes humanos, somos complexos o suficiente ao ponto de termos sido confiados uma cognição que nos permite contemplar e apreciar os astros colossais, que por mais poderosos que possam ser, jamais nos contemplarão de volta.

Sim, se o fato de ser colossal e dotado de poder é algo deslumbrante e magnífico, a capacidade de conceber e apreciar estas qualidades também é tão impressionante quanto tê-las! Se pensarmos no universo como uma pintura feita por um talentoso Artista, poderíamos imaginar seu apreço pelas estrelas e galáxias que compõem quase toda a obra. Mas também poderíamos imaginar o carinho e a atenção dedicados à composição dos humanos, "detalhes" no contexto geral, mas com uma complexidade tamanha que talvez os colocasse em patamar de igualdade com o restante do quadro.

O universo é indescritivelmente maravilhoso. Mas nossa capacidade cognitiva de concebê-lo e contemplá-lo torna a cada um de nós tão vastos quanto estrelas.