On My Way Out - weblog of a white belt in The Way of the Indiscreet Mechanical Pencil

Escherian Tilings

2011-12-10T15:37:00.002Z

Just spent a week teaching a course on Escherian tilings at Universidade Aberta (the Portuguese analogue of the Open University). This is a tiling I made as a demo for the students. It is a deformation of a regular triangular tiling of the plane.

a womb full of guillotines

2011-10-27T18:48:00.000+01:00

Art as therapy?

Art as a molotov cocktail. Art as a flame thrower. Art as a knife wound. Art as a womb full of guillotines, ready to give birth. Art as a curse upon the halls of impunity, to hound them for a thousand years. Anthony took the hands of Cicero, but still they strangle the neck of his memory, and Cesena still burns in the hell Michelangelo painted for him.

They must learn to fear Art again.

On the ongoing occupation of Wall Street

2011-10-08T00:24:00.001+01:00

Regarding the criticism that "the movement hasn't got a well-defined, clear message":

Direct action is the message. The discomfort for the people in charge is the message. The formulation of clearly stated objectives (hard in a truly spontaneous movement) is not as important as the creation of hardship and discomfort to the people in charge. The single message is: you have made our lives hell, we will make your lives uncomfortable until *you* figure out what needs to be done to make us happy enough to stop.

Discussion here:

http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2011/10/paul-krugman-confronting-the-malefactors.html#comments

The one who got away

2011-08-02T20:12:00.000+01:00

Today I went on the subway without my pad. Three crumpled white sheets had to make do instead. A whole parade of interesting characters were riding today - a very stern man who could be a marble bust, a couple of punk girls (one with blue hair), and two very opposite extremes, one with very wide mouth, the other with a long thin skull. I am happy with my catch.

I lost the very most interesting portrait, though. A girl with the most amusing and singularly warm expression. I couldn't get a proper angle, at first, and then when I was about to start, my station arrived. I would have proceeded where I not so damned british about keeping a schedule. For shame! I really wanted that portrait done!... Better luck next time, I hope...

Urban Sketchers Symposium and Sketchcrawl

2011-08-02T17:49:00.001+01:00

This year's urban sketchers symposium happened in Lisbon. After the conferences and workshops, we went out to our usual sketchcrawl, only this time we filled our spot (Praça do Comercio) to the rim with a far more numerous and international crowd than we usually get...

More drawings at the usual place, of course.

Examination season

2011-07-20T18:23:00.000+01:00

Atlas Relieved

2011-06-24T21:11:00.001+01:00

A couple of friends had a paper coming out (on game theory) and I got asked to contribute an illustration. The paper has to do with the tragedy of the commons and how to elicit cooperation while facing the possibility of a common catastrophic risk. The drawing I came up with is loosely based on the style of the ancient Greek vases, and depicts old Atlas getting some help from a few enlightened mortals. The dice are an obvious reference to probability and risk, and the graph on the bottom left comes straight from the paper itself. There is very little acuracy intended on the world map - geography was sacrificed to design and the deadline - a hecatomb, if you will, to Chronos and the Muses :)

The drawing was used as an illustration to the paper's press release.

As for materials, it is pure digital (no pencil preliminaries), hand-drawn with a wacom pen on the screen of my more-or-less-trusty HP pavillion tx2000.

Refrescos no Largo Camões (Refreshments at Camões square)

2011-06-17T11:59:00.002+01:00

Another drawing from the refreshments stand at Camões square.

Outro desenho do quiosque de refrescos no largo Camões.

Pessoa no Largo Camões

2011-06-14T01:16:00.001+01:00

(um desenho que fiz em tempos para uma competição do quiosque de refrescos)

Crimes and misdeweiners

2011-06-13T18:20:00.001+01:00

On the irrelevance of a congressman's misdeWeiner:

Congressmen, senators, and presidents are routinely in bed with banksters, wall streeters, and lobyists of all sorts - and this corruption is the new normal - but let them try to get some actual sex - real or virtual!- and they are doomed to disgrace: theirs is the maoist ritual of weeping public apology and humiliation, followed by "treatment" (for what? having a libido? - and is "treatment" the new word for "reeducation"?). The new model politician seems to be the robber monk. By all means, people, keep worrying where congressmen stick their weiners while ignoring their hands stuck deeply in your pockets.

O golfe lidera a desobediência civil!

2011-05-23T03:04:00.000+01:00

Já se sabia que as empresas de golfe queriam ter uma taxa de IVA especial de 6%. O que não se sabia é que essas empresas recusam-se a pagar a taxa actual, e pagam aquela que querem ver instituída. Ou seja, a taxa legal é de 23%, mas eles pagam 6% na mesma. Sim, só porque lhes apetece. O DN, como já é habitual, prefere usar o eufemismo: Golfe teima em pagar 6%. Se fosse eu a "teimar" pagar uma taxa inferior á legal, chamava-se a isso fraude fiscal, mas para os senhores do golfe é apenas teimosia. Da mesma forma que um pobre é louco e um rico é excêntrico, ao crime dos ricos chama-se teimosia.

Ou não? Será isto a aristocracia a liderar a desobediência civil.? A dar o exemplo à revolta popular? Sigamos então o nobre exemplo. Recusemo-nos a pagar qualquer IVA a mais de 6%, e, em espírito de desobediência civil, ocupemos os clubes de golfe (que certamente serão solidários à causa): espetamos as tendas no meio dos greens, fazemos as nossas latrinas nas armadilhas de areia, e tomamos os nossos banhos nos lagos. E se nos disserem para sair...teimamos em ficar.

Nostalgia

2011-05-23T02:15:00.001+01:00

Iceland's big thaw - Learning from the Vikings

2011-05-16T07:57:00.001+01:00

“Everyone was working for the banks — from the physicists to the philosophers,” one Icelander told me. I met two women in their mid-20s who said that when they graduated from college, virtually all of their classmates were jockeying to get into finance (...)

When money was easy, he said, “innovation was at a minimum in the country.” The prevailing sense was that it was a waste of time to invent things yourself when you could just “buy innovation from someone else.” The boom, Gudjonsson concluded, “made us lazy thinkers.”(...)

(...)when Iceland’s economy hit rock bottom, and the entire country was seized by panic — was also his son’s 16th birthday. “I went up to my boy, and I had already congratulated him on his birthday, but then I said, ‘Congratulations, you will now be able to live in a society which is closer to realizing what it is.’ ” I pressed Grimsson, asking why exactly he was so happy for his son. “After this,” Grimsson replied, “he had a much better chance of growing up to be a real person instead of a vapid airhead.”

Iceland's big thaw - (NYT)

We can learn from these Vikings. For years now we have a lamentable brain drain going on. A whole generation of physicists turned quants, earning a living through ruinous voodoo mathematics; literature majors in outbound sweatshops selling fraudulent investments; philosophy majors speculating in real estate - a whole people eagerly emulating a certain presidential candidate with a dead hamster on his head and another inside it. At an even more insidious level, those who nominally remain in creative professions feel obliged to spend a lot of their time nursing stock portfolios and worrying about market strategies (guilty as charged). How can you not? As everyone does it, you feel you must do it just to stay in the same place! Now that finance is a byword, Icelanders have a chance of putting their creative brains to use. Meanwhile, in the EU and the USA, it is still in finance, the stock market and the banks that we stupidly set our hopes. Perhaps we need The Big One to come and hit us sooner rather than later.

Gibbon

2011-05-14T13:06:00.000+01:00

"(...) But its fall was announced by a clearer omen than the flight of vultures: the Roman government appeared every day less formidable to its enemies, more odious and oppressive to its subjects. The taxes were multiplied with the public distress; economy was neglected in proportion as it became necessary; and the injustice of the rich shifted the unequal burden from themselves to the people, whom they defrauded of the indulgences that might sometimes have alleviated their misery. (...)The severe inquisition which confiscated their goods, and tortured their persons, compelled the subjects of Valentinian to prefer the more simple tyranny of the Barbarians (...) They abjured and abhorred the name of Roman citizens, which had formerly excited the ambition of mankind (...) and the Imperial ministers pursued with proscriptive laws, and ineffectual arms, the rebels whom they had made. If all the Barbarian conquerors had been annihilated in the same hour, their total destruction would not have restored the empire of the West: and if Rome still survived, she survived the loss of freedom, of virtue, and of honor."

-E. Gibbon, The decline and fall of the Roman Empire

The Great Firewall of Europe

2011-05-12T15:06:00.000+01:00

Again, Europe must compete with China, this time on internet censorship. I'm sure we'll do well on that front.

The new world order seems best illustrated by the wholesome image of comrade Mao french-kissing Mr. Rockefeller. Most assuredly their puppies will be lovely.

More Samba in Alfama

2011-05-08T21:19:00.003+01:00

Sodansusamba, Sodansusamba....

2011-05-08T21:13:00.000+01:00

While C. and I sat at one of those cosy, minuscule bars in Lisbon's Alfama, these two characters (she brasilian, he Portuguese) sat down and filled the room with beautiful brasilian music, free of charge, to an enraptured audience. "Was that too loud?" - the guitarist asked the black barkeep after a more enthusiastic moment, to which she smiled a "no, that's fine", and joined in around the players. So much talent to go around, why do we need to fly the same packaged performer-millionaires around the world so we can pay small fortunes to be packed like devoted rats into stadiums and have our eardrums ruptured by canned music?

Antidote

2011-05-08T20:46:00.000+01:00

I'm becoming too grumpy. This blog needs some drawings urgently.

You are gonna be screwed. In compensation, I am gonna screw you.

2011-05-08T20:16:00.004+01:00

Portuguese journalism at its best: You are going to be screwed, but don't worry: in compensation, I am going to do the some screwing.

Specifically: The anual tax for having a home will go up. In compensation (according to how the DN newspaper uses the word), the one-time tax for buying a home will go down. Meaning: The state will squeeze you out of your home, and in compensation it will make it cheaper for the guy who takes your home from you when you are desperate enough to sell for peanuts.

The IMF/EC/ECB wants more renting and less owning. But wait, if a house is rented, it still has an owner. What they mean is that the owner won't be you.

Let's use the word compensation in a sentence, kids:

The VAT over milk is going up. In compensation, the VAT over golf courses is going down. (True story!)

In the mother tongue:

Segundo o DN, O IMI (o imposto que pagamos por ter uma casa) vai aumentar, mas está tudo bem porque
"esta subida vai ser compensada com uma diminuição do imposto sobre as transacções onerosas sobre imóveis (IMT), antiga sisa, pago pelos contribuintes no acto de compra da casa."
Isto não é a minha especialidade, alguém corrija a minha ignorância se for o caso, mas parece-me que:
Sendo que o IMT é um imposto sobre as transacções de imóveis, pago pelo comprador, parece-me difícil que "compense" alguma coisa à típica família que todos os meses vai pagando o seu empréstimo, e que, anualmente, vai pagando um IMI agora mais elevado.

Talvez "compense", no entanto, os especuladores que nos próximos tempos achem por bem adquirir imóveis vendidos ao desbarato por essas mesmas famílias? As medidas acordadas pela "troika" pretendem desincentivar a compra de casa e incentivar o aluguer. Tudo muito razoável, mas pensando bem, se há casas para alugar, alguém será dono delas. Parece-me bem que o novo jogo é cada vez termos menos donos, cada um deles com mais casas. Talvez por isso seja adequado aumentar o IMI (e em simultâneo retirar os benefícios fiscais) para espremer os actuais donos, ao mesmo tempo que reduzimos o imposto que os novos compradores terão que pagar para recolher o "sumo" dos espremidos.

É um exemplo de "tu vais perder, mas não te preocupes: em compensação, eu vou ganhar".

Outro exemplo icónico desta definição da palavra:

O IVA sobre o leite vai subir, mas esta subida vai ser compensada pela descida do IVA sobre os clubes de Golf.

ps: Actualmente existe uma isenção de IMT para quem compre um prédio para revenda no prazo de três anos, o que já favorecia os especuladores, daí que me pareça que o propósito desta medida será facilitar a vida a quem pretenda adquirir imóveis para fins mais pemanentes. Following the money, smells like a concentration of rentiers.

Get your cadmium rice while it's hot

2011-05-08T15:34:00.001+01:00

"We must compete with China!" - is the mantra that justifies all.

You want to get payed for overtime? WE MUST COMPETE WITH CHINA!

Vacations? CHINA!

Healthcare?? CHINA!!

Minimum wage??? CHINA!!!!

In this spirit, I impatiently inquire when I may expect the arrival of our recycled buns, paraffin eggs, cadmium rice, boraxed pork, and generally poisoned food.

You want food that won't kill you? Are you insane? WE MUST COMPETE WITH CHINA!

Never Enough

2011-05-07T17:44:00.000+01:00

"In 2007, the top 1 percent of all income earners in the United States made 23.5 percent of all income -- more than the bottom 50 percent. Not enough! The percentage of income going to the top 1 percent nearly tripled since the mid-1970s. Not enough! Eighty percent of all new income earned from 1980 to 2005 has gone to the top 1 percent. Not enough! The top 1 percent now owns more wealth than the bottom 90 percent. Not enough! The Wall Street executives with their obscene compensation packages now earn more than they did before we bailed them out. Not enough! With the middle class collapsing and the rich getting much richer, the United States now has, by far, the most unequal distribution of income and wealth of any major country on earth. Not enough!"

-Sen. Bernie Sanders, Huffington Post

Time to be agressively irresponsible

2011-05-01T15:51:00.002+01:00

If I owe 100 thousands to the bank, I am in trouble. If I owe 100 billions, the bank is in trouble.

First, this is not a moral tale, no matter what German rethoric would have us believe. Both the lenders and borrowers have been irresponsible, yet the burden is all put on the latter, with the former expecting a profit. Portugal is not being bailed out. Portugal is being forced to bail out German banks.

But what can we do, our leaders say? We have no choice but to submit!

What we can do is use our weakness as a strength. Put the gun to our own heads. Demand actual help from the ECB, or else... or else we will default, and start a process that brings down first Spain, then the whole EU (and the country that matters, Germany), right along with us. We need and we can hold the EU hostage. What we need is to elect a political force from outside of the usual circle of "responsible" parties; someone that can be "credibly irresponsible". That is why I am voting for the communists in the coming election. Not because I am a communist, but because we need someone that scares the shit out of Merkel and Trichet.

Why are we, instead of using the cards we have, begging for IMF loans at the price of our independence and our future, to ensure smooth sailing for German banks? There are only three possible answers: either our politicians are ignorant of our strenght, or too cowardly to use it, or...their interests are simply not aligned with our own.

All three are probably true in some measure, but the last one is the most important: the austerity measures, the destruction of the social state, are not their concessions to the necessity of the crisis. Rather, the crisis is the excuse to replace the social state by the society they want: not "free market", which they mock, but rather a guilded age of crony capitalism, with monopolists in charge of the market and an incestuous poltical class that ignores us all as rabble. Sadly, we are back to the fights of 100 years ago. Happily, just like 100 years ago, we do not have to stay defeated.

It is time to be agressively irresponsible.

Intrepid Germany to the rescue of Intrepid Germany

2011-05-01T13:43:00.003+01:00

From the "Like, Duh-uh" department at The Economist

Is Germany bailing out euro-area countries to save its own banks? (no, it's the puppies and rainbows)

If the euro zone were an old-fashioned family, Germany would be the stern father telling his wayward children to go to bed early and not to spend all their pocket money at once. It has resisted efforts to ease the conditions attached to the bail-outs of Greece and Ireland, and is insisting that Portugal (...) also gets licked into shape

Sovereign defaults would entail much more than just a haircut on German banks’ government-bond exposures. It could easily lead to a slew of bank defaults—and corporate ones, too. German banks are owed twice as much by banks in the three bailed-out countries as they are by governments.

(...)compared with the potential costs of full-blown default, the amounts that Germany and other countries are likely to put into the three bail-out packages look like excellent value (...). The rescuers need not be quite so sanctimonious.

Adam Smith vs the mercantile class

2011-05-01T13:10:00.000+01:00

The last post reminded me of an obligatory Adam Smith quote (if you want to rebuke the faux free market advocates - who think free markets are good for us little people but not for the rich - I know of no saner and more incisive helper than Mr. Smith, who loved the markets but knew their failings well):

In reality high profits tend much more to raise the price of
work than high wages.(...)

Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of
the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby
lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say
nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent
with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They
complain only of those of other people.

-Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (chapter IX, last paragraph)

A rising tide lifts all yachts

2011-05-01T13:01:00.000+01:00

Prosperity in Germany means only prosperity for the owners of capital:

German Workers Might Get Pay Increases, Call In the Central Bank!

Saturday, 30 April 2011 08:31

The NYT reports that the low unemployment rate in Germany might allow workers to get higher wages, which could put upward pressure on the inflation rate. The only sources cited in this story are Jean-Calude Trichet, the head of the European Central Bank, Rainer Brüderle, the Economics minister for the conservative German government, and Jörg Krämer, the chief economist at Commerzbank in Frankfurt. It would have been useful to include the views of someone who believes that German workers should see pay increases.

Real wages in Germany have barely risen over the course of the last decade, even as productivity has grown by close to 2 percent a year. This has led to a shift from wages to profits. It has also meant that German labor costs have fallen relative to labor costs of the countries like Greece, Portugal, and Spain. The only way that trade between Germany and these countries can become more balanced (as long as they remain in the euro) is by having some combination of higher labor costs in Germany and lower labor costs in the peripheral countries. For this reason, higher wages for German workers would not just be beneficial to these workers, it would also be an important part of the re-balancing needed within the euro zone. It is remarkable that this obvious point is never mentioned in this article.

It is also worth noting that this article uses misleading unemployment data. It gives readers the official German unemployment rate of 7.1 percent. This measure counts part-time workers as unemployed. TheOECD measure, which uses a similar methodology to the United States, shows that Germany has an unemployment rate of 6.3 percent. There is no excuse for not using the OECD measure since it is readily available and provides readers with a more accurate assessment of Germany's labor market situation.

-from cepr.net

very small things

2011-04-15T04:57:00.000+01:00

(...)
In a folded
spear of the Bird of Paradise lily,
two snails are mating. They began
yesterday and after twenty hours’
foreplay are still at it, inserting mutual
penises into mutual vaginas. ‘In times
dedicated to universality and excess’,
I have ‘never been so interested
in very small things – twinkling tadpoles
in a barrel of water, the germination
of a fungus, ants nibbling at the leaves
of a lemon tree and leaving it like lace.
(...)

- Landeg White, in Letters from Portugal (to appear)

Julia

2011-04-15T04:22:00.000+01:00

I always thought Julia was the really smart one, in Orwell's 1984:

" I don't imagine that we can alter anything in our own lifetime. But one can imagine little knots of resistance springing up here and there -- small groups of people banding themselves together, and gradually growing, and even leaving a few records behind, so that the next generations can carry on where we leave off.'

'I'm not interested in the next generation, dear. I'm interested in us.'

'You're only a rebel from the waist downwards,' he told her.

She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms round him in delight.

In the ramifications of party doctrine she had not the faintest interest. Whenever he began to talk of the principles of Ingsoc, doublethink, the mutability of the past, and the denial of objective reality, and to use Newspeak words, she became bored and confused and said that she never paid any attention to that kind of thing. One knew that it was all rubbish, so why let oneself be worried by it? She knew when to cheer and when to boo, and that was all one needed. If he persisted in talking of such subjects, she had a disconcerting habit of falling asleep. She was one of those people who can go to sleep at any hour and in any position. Talking to her, he realized how easy it was to present an appearance of orthodoxy while having no grasp whatever of what orthodoxy meant. In a way, the world-view of the Party imposed itself most successfully on people incapable of understanding it. They could be made to accept the most flagrant violations of reality, because they never fully grasped the enormity of what was demanded of them, and were not sufficiently interested in public events to notice what was happening. By lack of understanding they remained sane. They simply swallowed everything, and what they swallowed did them no harm, because it left no residue behind, just as a grain of corn will pass undigested through the body of a bird."

What a beautiful new world to look up to

2011-04-15T04:16:00.000+01:00

For chinese men, no house mean no luv

The takeover goes on

2011-04-15T04:13:00.000+01:00

In financial crisis, no prosecutions of top figures (NYT)

Would we allow goldman sachs to fail now? (baselinescenario) (spoiler: the answer is no (of course))

I love to say I told you so, F., so here it is: "I told you so". I told you we should have let them all fall and you said I was irresponsible. I said at least we had to punish them right there and then and you said there was no time, we'd to it later; you said after this it would never be the same; it would have to change; they would have to accept changes. Well, here we are.

Years later, no punishment, no regulation, failed banks and failed rating agencies preaching over the states who bailed them, and all of us on the road to servitude under the new corporate feudalism. And still the sheep bleat and flog both each other and their own backs and join in the cries of the austerics, like in some catholic orgy of self-flagelation. Is it some judeo-cretin fetish again, maybe that's why I don't get it? Why aren't you shouting "off with their heads?" Why aren't they cowering in fear? Why aren't you singing "you got the guns but we've got the numbers?". Instead you cower in fear. Are you now discovering what being poor is? It is not about having no money. You still have money, but already you are poor. It is about living in fear. Every single day. It is about going to sleep hoping you won't get sick, because if everything goes right you might just make it, but if you wake up sick, expensively sick, then you are ruined forever - there in the gutter, but for the sake of luck, you go.

Why aren't you at least politely correcting them when they say "the state failed"? The state failed? Yes, it failed, when it bailed them out. But they who speak of the markets, the markets have spoken and they all failed, from the dirtiest Madoff right up to sage Warren Buffet, they all failed. They are broke. They are only standing up, the financially undead, because they bought the politicians and stole our money and our futures. And we let them. Because we won't go out on the streets and bring the whole fucking thing down. Because we won't burn their golf courses and serve them molotov cocktails. Because we have grown too polite. We have been bred to cower in front of the new aristocracy, to feed on their narrative, to think in their terms. And to admire their ugly mugs in the covers of magazines. The pigs have taken over the farm.

Large corporations are in effect states, and by their nature the worst kind of states: private realms and absolute tyrannies. The employer's rule is arbitrary, he controls what you dress, he controls every waking hour, and what the waking hours are, he controls your speech. Oh, you can leave. Leave and beg your meal from another just as bad, or perish, since the the social state is about to be eliminated. Your tax money is not there for you, you parasite! It is there to bail out your betters when they fuck up again.

Communism fails because it degenerates into an opressive bureaucracy. Capitalism fails because it degenerates into corporate feudalism. Both are unstable systems, vigilance is necessary, and a periodical reboot must be executed, at great human expense. Jefferson was wise, or at least, right.

It is a brilliant takeover. We have freedom of speech - in the public sphere. We have the right to vote - in the public sphere. We have lots of rights - in the public sphere. Nobody would dare take those rights away openly. But the public sphere is reduced to a mere pebble, and in the private sphere - that occupies the whole world where you can dwell, feed, survive - it is back to middle age autocracy. Welcome back to the age of the robber barons. Welcome back to the age where I wonder if I should say such things in the future, without wearing a mask.

As I was writing this the sheep were shouting over some idiotic football match. The whole street trembled in joy because some obscenely overpayed athlete stuck a ball into a goal. If only these people could be made to shout half as hard over the fact they and their children are being gutted, the day could still be won.

Plus ça change...

2011-04-14T17:21:00.000+01:00

"(...) when war comes they [The Government] are both unwilling and unable to increase their revenue in proportion to the increase of their expence. They are unwilling for fear of offending the people, who, by so great and so sudden an increase of taxes, would soon be disgusted with the war; and they are unable from not well knowing what taxes would be sufficient to produce the revenue wanted. The facility of borrowing delivers them from the embarrassment which this fear and inability would otherwise occasion. By means of borrowing they are enabled, with a very moderate increase of taxes, to raise, from year to year, money sufficient for carrying on the war, and by the practice of perpetually funding they are enabled, with the smallest possible increase of taxes, to raise annually the largest possible sum of money. In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace. They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war."

-Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations

Noblesse Oblige

2011-04-11T13:15:00.002+01:00

Of course we had to go into Lybia, young man! Have you no human compassion? What choice did we have, with civilian lives at stake? Mere consistency demanded so! Did we not rush headlong into Tian'anmen square? Did we not rescue Tibet? Did we not sanction and isolate China? Consistency, boy, and compassion, and Democracy, and, why, civilization! It is the white man's burden, after all!
Conditions apply: recipient of military help must have oil or other strategic interest; balance of forces must be extremely favorable, conflict must lead to inventory cycling and profits increase for miltary industrial complex.

Euro Doublespeak

2011-04-09T15:54:00.001+01:00

"(...)In essence (...) it is the taxpayers of Greece, Ireland and Portugal who are bailing out German, French and British taxpayers and depositors — not the other way around. The indebted countries are not really getting bailouts, he said, “but loans at high interest rates.” For there to be a real bailout, he said, there would have to be a default.(...)"
-New York Times link

This (...) is the price populations are now being asked to pay for the EU's refusal to heap any economic pain onto the banks that lent these countries money. The alternative to shutting down schools, emergency wards, slashing pension rights etc would be to impose a penalty on those who lent the money in the form of a so-called "haircut".

Paradoxically this is exactly what the EU's proposed future grand bargain involves:(...) any banks that lend to countries that show themselves in danger of going bust would be deemed "irresponsible lenders" and penalized by not getting all their money back. (...)

So why don't they simply apply this market logic in retrospect and impose losses on the banks now?

Here we come to the naked struggle between countries and between interest groups. The banks that irresponsibly lent so much money to peripheral Europe are mainly in, er, northern Europe. France, Germany and Britain would be hammered if their banks were forced to take losses now on the stricken sovereign debts of the periphery.

So the essential deal involved in the new "stability and growth" (don't you just love Euro doublespeak?) arrangements would be: poor countries must pay through austerity so that rich countries do not go through a banking crisis.

-Paul Mason, BBC link

Mértola

2011-03-25T15:58:00.000Z

Last year, me and a few friends went south to Mértola (Amendoeira da serra, to be more precise) and had some adventures, rummaging for sheep skulls, chasing black pigs (embarrasingly mistaken for boars) and generally sketching till we dropped.

Good times.

Nursery Rhyme Redux: Evolution made us all

2011-02-06T13:45:00.000Z

Evolution Made Us All from Ben Hillman on Vimeo.

A great nursery rhyme to teach your brats: Evolution made us all ( from mother Theresa to the lamprey eel). Bin Laden and Che Guevara make guest appearences.

Urban Sketchers - exposição / Urban Sketchers collective exhibition

2011-02-05T15:00:00.001Z

Em Setembro os urban sketchers foram em peso desenhar a Rua Augusta. Agora, de 2 a 18 de Fevereiro, os desenhos estão em exposição na Fac. de Belas Artes. Eu tenho lá um dos meus, também: este.

Last September the urban sketchers went out en masse to draw Rua (street) Augusta. A sample of our drawings will be on display at the Faculdade de Belas Artes in Lisbon, from February 2nd to February 18th.
I have one drawing there, namely this one.

Visual Illusion - "Silencing"

2011-01-11T00:53:00.001Z

From Harvard Vision Lab, a new type of visual illusion that shows we are apparently very bad at noticing changes in a moving object. If, like me, you are too busy to read the paper just check out the amazing videos at the vision labs page and prepare never to trust your two lying eyes again (in the example below, the colors are still changing at the same rate when the object moves - but you can't see it, can you?).

Motion silences awareness of color changes from Jordan Suchow on Vimeo.

Back to plundering as usual?

2011-01-08T11:51:00.001Z

From the NYT:

"This week, figures from a private research group, Income Data Services, showed that while pay raises for ordinary workers in 2010 had been about 2 percent — much less than the rate of inflation — average remuneration for chief executives at the country’s top 100 companies soared a staggering 55 percent. Many Britons are expecting the country’s bankers to award themselves billion of pounds in bonuses.

And while the squeezed middle is squeezed further, the columnist Simon Jenkins wrote in The Guardian, “the bankers have walked from the debacle scot free, with almost a trillion pounds of public money in their pockets.”

“As long as the government continues to tolerate this gross imbalance of pain,” Mr. Jenkins wrote, “people will howl, and they will be right.”"

And in the report issued by the IDS:

"IDS warn that and “the business as usual” approach of FTSE remuneration committees after

such a short period of restraint risks upsetting shareholders.

Steve Tatton, editor of the IDS Directors Pay Report comments: “It seems the days of earnings

restraint by FTSE-350 directors were short-lived. It is as though the recession never happened.”

“It stands in stark contrast to the coalition Government’s concerns about pay fairness and calls

for senior executives in the public sector to accept pay cuts.”

IDS says that while some chief executives may argue that their pay was a result of rising share

prices and improved company performance, shareholders are likely to ask whether the business

improvement over the period warrants the scale of the increases.

While the FTSE-100 rose 14.5% on the year, bonuses were up by over a third, share option gains

by over 90% and LTIPs by over 70%.

Despite the increasing scrutiny of shareholders, FTSE-100 chief executives received bonus

payments averaging £701,512, up 34% from last year (based on a matched sample).

Steve Tatton comments: “The size of the rebound in incentives for top company bosses poses

some questions for remuneration committees about the design of their incentives.”

“This time last year a number of companies actually reduced their bonus ceilings. Twelve months

later it appears as if these measures have been reversed, with around 40 companies reporting

higher bonus scheme maxima.”"

Merry XXX-mas

2010-12-24T17:29:00.001Z

In today's highly commercialized festivities it is easy to forget about the true meaning of Christmas: pretty girls in kinky red outfits. :) There's a XXX-mas that even an atheist like me can warmly relate to. :)

Sunshine at IMF

2010-12-21T20:10:00.002Z

http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/economics-and-demography/sunshine-at-the-imf-of-all-places/

Empty (Space!) Suits

2010-12-21T12:33:00.000Z

To take your mind of the depressing news, here is an article on a wonderful coming exhibition of lovingly crafted space suits, some of which have been to the moon. I wish I could go and visit this. When I was a kid I dreamt of being an astronaut for a while...original it certainly was not, but that is a dream no longer common among kids, it's sad that nobody seems to have grand dreams of that sort anymore, they all want to be pop stars, and everyone yawns about a shuttle launch while drooling about a stupid Ipad. Hey, why should we go to mars while there is hunger in the world? - they say - but what they mean is "why should we go to mars if we can build some new sports stadiums instead?"

Charcoal and Chalk on blue paper

2010-12-17T17:02:00.000Z

What really bugs me?

2010-12-14T22:58:00.000Z

They took all that tedious left-wing pinko nonsense about class warfare...

....and made it real.

Someone stole my favorite punching bag. Now heads must roll.

Tragedy at the Waldorf-Astoria

2010-12-14T22:47:00.000Z

Tragedy! Rich people get mistreated by rich(er) people.

The Red Queen is all hot and ready to go

2010-12-14T22:44:00.001Z

Right on queue with my previous post, "off with their heads" is chanted on the streets of London. For the record, when I mentioned the guillotine I wasn't thinking of the fossilized remnants of the old feudal lords (good for tourism and tabloids), I had in mind the new ones, who truly are begging for it.

Though it is a thing of beauty to see how the charming prince initially had his window half open, perhaps to show how confident he was of the love of the proles? Did he expect them to erupt in applause? Yes, great show of judgement, in older days the Royal family showed support for the people by staying in London during the bombings, now it does so by driving by in a Rolls Royce on the way to the Palladium to get their asses kissed and entertained by giddy "artists", escorted by state funded police, right in the face of protesters who just got their futures ruined by the supposed need to save money at all costs. Yeah, that had to work. No need to guillotine these idiots, they have no heads on their shoulders anyway.

Someone will have to make the guillotines

2010-12-01T11:17:00.000Z

It is very sad to see capitalism die. It is even sadder to see it replaced by something odious that walks and talks in its name.

There is no capitalism if some actors are not allowed to fail. There is no capitalism if gains are private and losses are public.

There is no Democracy if elected officials of all colors reverse their pledges once in power. There is no Democracy if irreversible measures are passed shamelessly against the clear will of the people.

There is nothing worse than taking the same position whatever the state of reality. The current situation should not be fought by communists who think -wrongly- that what they are fighting is capitalism. It should be fought by capitalists and democrats of all sorts who realize that capitalism and democracy have been murdered and replaced by a cleptocracy, run by feudal lords, where all but the few at the top are to be medieval serfs.

As things are, there is no shame in fighting alongside the communists, socialists, anarchists (or for that matter their equivalents in the right) even if they are fighting for the wrong reasons - there will be time to reform our lines later on. It is far more shameful to fight, by mere habit, by the side of those who happen to carry the flags we once stood by. A political party is not a football club. There is no lifetime allegiance to a flag or a denomination, but to a principle. People in all these camps can certainly agree that we do not deem acceptable to spend the rest of our lifes in medieval serfdom for the benefit of a few rich criminals - those of us with libertarian inclinations should agree with that most of all.

It is not capitalism if winners are fixed; it is not capitalism without social mobility; it is not capitalism without meritocracy; it is not capitalism if the tough rules of the market are not obeyed by all equally.

It is not capitalism at all. It is just a few rich people who got to the top, who then failed miserably, and rather than accept the market's verdict, bought the politicians and got the state to bear their losses. Not content with that, they get even richer, ruin the rest of us, and dare to call for cuts in the very social programs that are more than ever needed to help the people they have ruined. That these very same criminals should dare speak of "fiscal responsibility", while again indulging in their bonuses, is a cruel joke. That politicians should claim that they cannot interfere with the free market - when they interfered beyond all reason to preserve these people, and in doing so ruined their nations! - is all the proof that is needed that they are in their pockets. It is not capitalism, and it is not democracy. It is a bunch of rich people who took over the system for themselves. It is nothing less than a coup.

I predict that if this isn't stopped soon, at least some new manufacturing jobs will arise. Someone will have to make the guillotines.

going down

2010-11-26T13:17:00.002Z

In these most interesting days we now live in, we find ourselves questioning the very basis for our way of life. Oh, not whether our present life and our future plans were really ever worthwile, but simply whether or not they are tenable. Some find their great master plans unravelling, some others find that even the simple plans, the mere enjoyment of an ordinary human life - or what in the West we came to call normal, in our once privileged cocoon - become suddenly tenuous at best. A friend tells me that the future will be a time for re-embracing mysticism - I shudder at the thought. I agree however that the future may be a time to retreat within - but not to Religion, to astrology, to witch doctors, to "belief", that most primitive human pharmacology, but to those things that we can really rely on and don't require too much of a financial burden: rational thought, philosophy, the pleasures of the flesh, and, last but never least, the box of crayons.

Silly dancers

2010-11-14T20:14:00.001Z

Process

2010-10-26T02:00:00.001+01:00

1- mechanical pencil 0.5mm 2B on 15x19cm paper.

2-Sakura brush + sakura 0.05 + white gel pen

3-Watercolor+lousy scan+photoshop

Watercolor portrait 16/10/10

2010-10-17T20:33:00.000+01:00

Lately I've been taking my watercolors with me everywhere. With a pentel brushpen for black ink and another one filled with water I can get a quick impression that looks much better than my usual graphite studies. I find, however, that a graphite study teaches me more; it is a colder, more disciplined approach. But it looks poorer, and now that the world is getting poorer all around, I guess I need to contribute some richesses to the pages of my notebook. Of such careful balance is a good mood made. On that note, it is ironic perhaps that this sketch was made on a page that I was beggining to fill with calculations on Bayesian probability.

Rua Augusta

2010-10-11T21:04:00.000+01:00

Uma vista da Rua Augusta, feita neste Sábado durante o X encontro dos urban sketchers.

Even more Bouncies up to their tricks

2010-09-16T14:57:00.007+01:00

More Bouncies frolicking around

2010-09-16T14:57:00.004+01:00

Bouncies

2010-09-02T18:57:00.003+01:00

I've been drawing these bouncy guys for some time now. They just pop up on the borders of my notebooks, usually doing Aikido or gymnastics of some sort. I find the forms really appealing; sometimes they are rounder, sometimes they spread those sleeves and hover around like bats. For some reason I find it relaxing to draw their antics.

Colored Pencil - copy of Carl Brenders

2010-07-10T19:25:00.002+01:00

Making copies is a great way to learn. This is a very small copy (about 10x10 cm) done in colored pencil of a Carl Brenders (gouache?) original. It was pretty fast, maybe around three or four very relaxed hours over two sessions. Most of the trouble it gave me was self-inflicted. I wanted to do the whole thing just with four pencils (caran-d'ache orange, yellow, light blue (though I forgot and used a bit of darker blue on the nose, I think, quite without need), and red, and black for darkening and gray for desaturating. I wanted to prove to a couple of friends that you don't need the convenience colors, as the name implies, you can mix them as long as you have saturated colors, it's the opposite you cannot do - those glowing "neon" colors just can't be made from your payne's gray, burnt umber, sienna, or sap greens, I'm afraid, but the opposite is quite doable, though it will tax your patience (and therefore teach you a lot about your colors).

Oh, and the hairs were done with a blade.

...and yet another (watercolor) frog

2010-05-18T21:03:00.004+01:00

Done a while ago, but lately I've been too busy to post, much less paint any new stuff.

Another watercolor frog

2010-04-12T00:06:00.001+01:00

Another small watercolor frog, painted from photo reference.

watercolor

2010-03-06T19:09:00.002Z

Watercolor under construction, maybe about half way there. Just an exercise, working from photographic reference.

Urban Sketchers V - Santa Justa (3)

2010-03-05T12:35:00.003Z

The view from above. No topo do elevador, olhando para a praça do Comércio. Devia ter puxado das aguarelas, mas gostei deste desenho. O meu favorito da sessão.

Urban Sketchers V - Santa Justa (2)

2010-03-05T12:31:00.003Z

Em frente ao elevador, outras artes plásticas (ou silicónicas)...

Urban Sketchers V - Santa Justa (1)

2010-03-05T12:23:00.006Z

No Sábado passado, debaixo de uma chuvinha desagradável, juntei-me aos Urban Sketchers e fui desenhar nas imediações do elevador de Santa Justa. Aqui estão os resultados. My first official sketchcrawl, even though in point of fact I sketchcrawl all the time. Perdi-me um bocado do resto do pessoal, mas deu para conhecer o Rui (tão perdido como eu), e esbarrar com a Sara quase no final.

Urban Sketchers V - Santa Justa (0)

2010-03-05T12:20:00.000Z

Random people in the subway, on the way to Santa Justa.

Cinema

2009-10-29T01:26:00.002Z

...I'm getting to know thee better and better!

2009-10-24T11:43:00.001+01:00

Alas, poor Yorick!

2009-10-24T11:41:00.001+01:00

Obras em casa

2009-09-16T21:04:00.004+01:00

O Sr. Sabino, que primeiro destruiu e depois reconstruiu a minha casa-de-banho, apanhado em flagrante no acto, e depois a tomar um café no intervalo do almoço. Aprendi umas coisas uteis, e ainda dei uma ajudinha, talvez tenha futuro como servente de pedreiro! :)

ps: houve mais dois envolvidos, mas não os apanhei na mira...

Tendril of Anger

2009-05-01T01:42:00.001+01:00

"The old man felt a tendril of anger rising" - Another illustration for Gurney Journey, James Gurney's magnificient blog.

Zip it!

2009-03-03T01:02:00.002Z

Back to our usual programming

2009-03-03T00:54:00.003Z

The previous post should be ignored by those who come here for the pretty pictures (meaning, you guys the smart ones). I only revert to my native language here when I am pissed off about something. Trust me, you really don't wanna know.

Delírios Marxistas II - como lidar com os erros: negação e censura

2009-03-02T23:54:00.006Z

Vimos no post anterior que o nossos amigos bloquistas eram crédulos e ignorantes. Vemos agora que além disso são desonestos.

Quem seguiu o link que coloquei para o blog do Bloco de Esquerda de Vila Real não encontrou a citação referida. Porquê? Porque o bloqueiro/blogueiro em causa apagou-a sem deixar rasto. Quem estiver interessado ainda a pode encontrar na cache do google. Mas na página do bloco só se encontra isto:

"A anterior frase foi publicada na segunda página de um jornal ucraniano, onde refere que a frase pertence ao segundo volume do Capital... talvez tenham cometido algumas incorrecções na tradução.. :)

A pedido de muitas famílias, a anterior frase foi retirada e colocada outras três para que o tom dos comentários acalme :)"

E com um sorriso o nosso amigo elimina as provas, senão do crime, certamente do embaraço. Em vez de admitir o erro diz agora que a frase veio num jornal Ucraniano. Que exótico, agora lê jornais Ucranianos. Deve lê-los tanto quanto leu o Capital. Curiosamente refere que é na segunda página, mas não refere qual o jornal. É muito util, obrigado. Ah, e vem no segundo volume do capital (quando pela Net esta patranha vem com a data de 1867, que por acaso é a data do primeiro volume - o segundo é bastante mais tardio, foi o Engels que o publicou anos depois da morte do Marx).
Depois afirma ainda que "talvez" tenha "algumas incorrecções na tradução", o que dá muito jeito porque impede qualquer busca. Tanta desonestidade, e feita com tão pouco jeito, só pode causar nojo. Não há mesmo palavras...

Porque não admite, caro senhor, que simplesmente postou uma parvoíce que lhe chegou no email? Que foi enganado. Que nunca sequer pôs os olhos em cima do Capital e que não distingue o Marxismo do Confucionismo. E deixe lá os seus jornais Ucranianos. Chama-se a isso uma retracção. Bastava um comentário informal, tipo "eh, pá, enganaram-me", e pronto - em vez desta limpeza ao estilo das fitas do Nixon. Assim , pela calada, apagou a citação e os comentários. Que eram aliás cómicos e, suponho, embaraçosos. Ao que me lembro um visitante levantara objecções. Logo os defensores da esquerda o estraçalhavam e acusavam de imbecilidade, eles, os conhecedores profundos (hah!) das obras do camarada Marx.

O que nunca chegou a estar no blog foram os dois comentários que enviei a avisar do erro. Ficaram retidos para avaliação do blogueiro, e depois, silenciosamente, foi tudo eliminado com um sorriso, ao estilo tradicional dos estados policiais comunistas. Agradeço-o, torna bastante claro o espírito destes senhores. Se nem uma parvoice destas enfrentam com decência, isso diz muito do que fariam no poder. O senhor mostra grandes qualidades, terá futuro como censor, ou político.

Estes senhores podem não ser Marxistas. Falta-lhes o intelecto para tanto. Mas lá Estalinistas são eles.

Delírios Marxistas

2009-03-02T23:43:00.005Z

O que há de errado com a seguinte citação que anda a circular pela net?

"Os donos do capital vão estimular a classe trabalhadora a comprar bens caros, casas e tecnologia, fazendo-os dever cada vez mais, até que se torne insuportável. O débito não pago levará os bancos à falência, que terão que ser nacionalizados pelo Estado"
Karl Marx, Das Kapital, 1867

O que há de errado é que:

-A linguagem é totalmente errada para o século XIX.

-Qualquer pessoa que tenha lido o Capital sabe que isto não tem nada a ver com o seu conteúdo

É natural: É que esta frase NÂO está no Capital. É uma fraude.

Mas isso não demoveu os comunistas portugueses de espalharem a "citação" por toda a parte. Eu recebi-a duas vezes por email. E anda espalhada por sites oficiais do bloco de esquerda (e.g. esquerda.net e BE de vila real). O que é triste não é que uns tantos comunistas/bloquistas escrevam tais disparates, o que é triste é que nenhum dos vistantes de esquerda desses sites o tenham detectado. Parece que são todos um tanto crédulos (a credulidade extrema é pre-requisito para entrar no partido?), e um tanto ignorantes da sua própria "religião". Pelo visto os nossos comunistas-de-fim-de-semana nunca leram o Capital nem sabem nada da doutrina que espalham por aí. É tão cómico. Imagine-se uma testemunha de Jeová que insiste em pregar a sua fé, mas...nunca leu a Biblia.

Estão à espera do quê, Camaradas? Que alguém faça o filme?

Run for it!

2009-02-19T19:44:00.002Z

Some people have a clue

2009-01-05T19:35:00.003Z

After my previous post it was fun to see this article come up on january 1st, via Reuters, bearing the exact same statement:

"Was whole economy a Ponzi scheme?"

"The financial system as a whole has had the characteristics of a Ponzi scheme if we look at it fundamentally," said Lee, who was very early in warning about deflation.(...)

You can read the rest at the international herald tribune.

BAIL OUT MADOFF

2008-12-13T23:20:00.004Z

Turns out Madoff's unfathomable market skillz were just a Ponzi scheme after all. But hey ,what a ponzi scheme! At $50 billion estimate that's the mother of all Ponzies. In fact, I suppose that should make it (wait for it) TOO BIG TO FAIL. Just bail him out already, we must do it to save the economy! After all, you bailed out all the other financial Ponzi schemers, didn't you? Oh, I see the difference: Madoff, once caught, actually admited that what he did was fraud. It was too clearcut to deny, not enough layers of financial magic to trick the eye, no sophisticated financial merry-go-round to camuflage the simple truth. Damn, we can't have that kind of people around. The show is all about suspension of disbelief.

Where has all the money gone? Don't you realize the whole economy was itself a huge Ponzi scheme waiting to blow up? Don't you realize most of the money wasn't real to begin with?

A funny thing is, now that we are convenientely forgetting the trust-the-market mantra to bail out the creeps that got us in this mess, it slips your attention how well true market forces actually work: All this is just a huge flood, the market's way of cleaning out the trash, a wonderful demonstration of the power of its natural ecology. The crisis is doing nothing but exposing all the crap that was hiding under the carpet. Now the bubble has let out a little pus (you think it has blown? think again!) you realize how many of the revered masters of finance were nothing but douchebag schemers who never created a thing in their lives, merely played a zero-sum game to their advantage. They had no skills, not even at their random game, beyond those of a garden variety conman.

I share the same fears as everyone else, but often I think we should have let it all fail, and let the market sort it out. We need catharsis and a dose of reality. Or as a bard once put it: we don't need no water, let the motherfucker burn.

The coloured pencil is high on magic mushrooms (not me)

2008-09-08T21:59:00.001+01:00

Drowning in washes of coloured pencil (3)

2008-09-06T13:45:00.001+01:00

Drowning in washes of coloured pencil (2)

2008-09-05T20:36:00.002+01:00

Drowning in washes of coloured pencil (1)

2008-09-05T20:32:00.002+01:00

For Gurney Journey (1) - Egg Singers

2008-08-29T18:55:00.006+01:00

Lately I've been participating in Jim Gurney's ABC challenge. Every Wednesday Jim posts a small excerpt from a science fiction manuscript and we are asked to illustrate it out of context. It's time I posted here a few of my entries. This one's text was “Their voices were high-pitched, piercing…but human.” For this one I actually did a couple of versions, but ended up deciding on the smaller crop. The big one works ok on paper but on the form factor of and ordinary screen it loses a lot (you either see the whole but no detail or you have to scroll - anyway, you lose focus and impact). You gotta consider the medium.

huge smile

2008-08-08T22:30:00.000+01:00

Love (handles)...

2008-08-08T22:28:00.000+01:00

...will find a way.

On the subway today

2008-08-08T18:48:00.000+01:00

...not really.

Cute...

2008-08-08T18:28:00.004+01:00

...until you notice it is just the constant bickering for finite resources.

Only those few things we Humans do that have a place out of that game make us any better than mere beasts. Though one must wonder in all honesty if anything we do really lies outside it...

Yes, the enlightened man would know not to play this dirty game. The semi-enlightened man knows however that, if you are forced to play...

...you should insist on winning. Not most of the time - that is just petty accounting - not once in a while.

Always.

N.

2008-08-06T21:45:00.001+01:00

Spent the day doing Contact geometry

2008-08-05T22:37:00.002+01:00

...in Beach Space. (this is an inside joke just for you, Boss :))

Lips

2008-08-04T14:13:00.002+01:00

...full of expression...

In progress

2008-08-04T14:07:00.002+01:00

Making corrections to a life drawing from a reference photograph is fraught with danger. Unless you usually draw with one eye closed, for instance, you are bound to suffer some surprises. Yet it is also a profitable exercise, as long as you take the caveat emptor into account.

taichi, or something

2008-08-03T22:24:00.000+01:00

Charge, my stormtroopers of beauty!

2008-08-02T13:49:00.008+01:00

Some charcoal drawings I did recently in a few days of non-stop work, for a tight deadline. I called on all my best models for this one. Thanks girls! Thank you, my sisters of mercy, my stormtroopers of beauty! With you all by my side, I shall one day charge the Louvre walls and take it for your throne. Oh, let me dangle immortality in front of you, baseless promisses of immortality are my best liar's bribe, and you love to hear it with that knowing smile!...

Y. (2)

2008-07-27T02:34:00.000+01:00

Ladies and Gentlemen...

2008-07-20T22:09:00.003+01:00

...Mr Leonard Cohen.

Leonard was kind enough to visit all of us, yesterday, in Lisbon, by the river Tagus.
This morning we all woke up a bit dazed. I tried to describe it to a friend, but failed in the attempt. Around tea time these doodles came out. I decided to leave them here so that a few years from now this will remind me of a special evening.

Yes, Leonard, you left us all satisfied. Farewell.

ps: Apropos, My 23 year old friend, who is pretty hot, says she would still (totally) do you ;) (yeah, I'll slip you her number - it seems it's true, you do live forever when you wrote a line or two!)

vine charcoal + compressed charcoal + charcoal pencil + mirror + weird look on face

2008-06-20T11:28:00.002+01:00

Oh, and by the way...

2008-06-19T12:39:00.001+01:00

...this blog is now 3 years old :)

Happy birthday to me...Happy Birthday tooo meeeeeee......

Y.

2008-06-19T12:35:00.001+01:00

And you? What of you? You... just cannot be taken seriously! ;)

L.

2008-06-19T12:25:00.003+01:00

Loulou had the kind of skin that seems to shine with its own light. An example of the effects of subsurface scattering that are so typical of a certain type of fair french skin and that Bouguereau painted so wonderfuly - a kind of automatic real life photoshop blur+glow arises from all those photons scattering through adjacent spots of skin, capilaries and so on. Sorry Loulou, the drawing was too fast, doesn't look like you at all, but it stays here to remind me that I must one day master those wonderful fancies of light...

with apologies to mr. Sargent and Madame X

2008-06-18T12:20:00.000+01:00

scarf mania (2)

2008-06-15T18:02:00.000+01:00

scarf mania (1)

2008-06-15T17:59:00.002+01:00

charcoal dust, vine charcoal and mirror

2008-06-14T17:00:00.001+01:00

Porto 2008 - Nathan

2008-05-30T19:26:00.002+01:00

My friend Nathan, utterly enthusiastic (maybe actually *too* much, Nathan! :)) about a numerical semigroups seminar.

30 minutes female nude in coloured pencil (2)

2008-05-16T21:41:00.002+01:00