JORGE RODRIGUES SIMÃO

No pretence to greater wisdom is made in these texts; whether time is a fourth dimension of the universe or a reified abstraction, whether it is continuous or atomistic, whether it can exist independently of motion to be measured, whether any meaning attaches to ‘before’ in the phrase ‘before Creation’ or ‘before the Big Bang’, are for others to determine. The same St Augustine, faced with the question what God was doing before he created the world, quoted, though he did not endorse, the jocular answer, ‘Preparing hells for folk who invented clever conundrums like that’; I shall not take the chance that a true word was spoken in jest.

Nor shall I consider whether time proceeds in a straight line or in cycles. Although it is not true that linear time was a Judaeo-Christian speciality, set against the cyclical time symbolised in late Graeco-Roman paganism as a serpent devouring its tail, some philosophers did speak of time in cyclical terms. That poses conceptual problems that I shall not discuss; rather I shall confine myself to time in its ordinary-language or man-in-the-street sense, and shall concentrate on the methods by which its passage is and has been measured.

The English word ‘time’ may refer to a more or less closely defined period, from ‘a short time’, meaning not very long, to ‘the time of the Pharaohs’, some three thousand years; it may also refer to the ‘indefinite continuous duration’, as the Oxford English Dictionary expresses it, in which all events have taken place, are taking place, and will take place. These texts can be complemented by the book  A Brief History of Time - Stephen Hawking

PERSPECTIVAS - A incontida gestao da raiva - HojeMacau - 28.03.2017

“Donald Trump's US election win is America's Brexit - voted for by people angry with the status quo.”

Daily Mirror, 09 NOV 2016

Jack Blanchard

 Se tivermos de expressar em uma frase a grande característica da psicopolítica da actual situação mundial, deve soar como a da entrada em uma era com uma visão do mundo, sem sinais  de gestão da ira. A raiva é a chave para compreender e descrever a psicologia política do mundo, após o fim do comunismo e da era bipolar. A partir da ira de Aquiles, o mundo nunca soube gerir a energia da raiva na história. O termo grego "thymos" significa a vontade, o desejo, luxúria e ira. O “thymos” é o motor das acções do herói homérico. Mais tarde, torna-se a sede da aspiração de reconhecimento, e a falta de reconhecimento desperta a raiva e com as religiões monoteístas o património é impelido na outra vida, onde vai realizar a justiça divina.

PERSPECTIVAS - O crescimento sustentável - HojeMacau - 17.03.2017

“The triple bottom line (TBL) thus consists of three Ps: profit, people and planet. It aims to measure the financial, social and environmental performance of the corporation over a period of time. Only a company that produces a TBL is taking account of the full cost involved in doing business. In some senses the TBL is a particular manifestation of the balanced scorecard. Behind it lies the same fundamental principle: what you measure is what you get, because what you measure is what you are likely to pay attention to. Only when companies measure their social and environmental impact will we have socially and environmentally responsible organisations.”

The Economist Guide to Management Ideas and Gurus

Tim Hindle

O grande tema revisitado do capitalismo nos velhos países industrializados, é reduzir os funcionários, aumentar o impacto da tecnologia e percentagem das pessoas idosas, sem um rendimento que lhes permita uma vida digna, o que por si deve ser a mola suficiente para promover um plano de reformas ao capitalismo, que faça que a economia crescer de forma sustentável. O historiador inglês, Eric Hobsbawm, no seu livro “The Age of Extremes: The Short Twentieth Century, 1914 -1991”, referia-se à história do século XX, como sendo o século curto, porque tinha começado em 1914, com a I Guerra Mundial e terminado em 1989, com o colapso da União Soviética.

 What is the Human Right to Education?

The Right to Education

Education

'Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern, but impossible to enslave.' This comment, attributed to the Member of Parliament and Lord Chancellor Baron Brougham (1778-1868), reminds us that education is essential to any effort to enhance human rights. In this sense, the right to education is crucial to empowering people to be able to enjoy their other rights. The right to education involves not only obligations to refrain from interfering with the right by closing schools or discriminating against certain pupils, but also includes obligations to fulfil the right to education by providing compulsory, free primary education for all. The right to education has been developed at the doctrinal level to encompass what is known as a '4As' approach: availability, accessibility, acceptability, and adaptability. (Some might hear echoes here of the 3Rs - reading, writing, and arithmetic.)