Arquivo para January, 2022
Covid 19: increase in the number of deaths
31
Jan
The rhythm and curve in each country are different, Europe, even in
the middle of winter, saw the curve increase exponentially and only later did they take sanitary measures, in some countries including with lockdown, Asian countries, especially China and Japan, faced with strict isolation measures. and were successful in controlling the new wave, the winter Olympics that are about to begin in Beijing will not have an audience and the measures for the delegations have been a rigorous testing control.
A WHO official Van Kherkhove warned of the assumption that the virus will go softer with mutations: “There is no guarantee of that”, of course we hope so: “but there is no guarantee of that and we cannot bet on it”, justifying that measures sanitation services are still sorely needed.
In Brazil, there is an increasing number of daily infections, which approach the record of 200 thousand (graphic), and an increase in daily deaths that exceeds 800, with a moving average around 500, the increase is significant and there is no visible stabilization or decline trend, several states register an increase, only Pernambuco, Pará and Rondônia register stability.
The policy that believes, by hypothesis, that the pandemic is passing or that it can become an endemic is still without clear scientific data, the very seriousness of the omicron that is less lethal does not have a precise assessment, working on preventive when it comes to life is the most prudent thing the authorities can do.
We hope and as we said last week, we believe in the power of positive thinking and believing in hope, that everything can be close to an end of the pandemic, but caution is still necessary with decisions that release the people and public events that may be responsible for a greater number of infections and deaths.
Everyday Forces for Peace
28
Jan
Just as we can cultivate, from our thoughts, in words and deeds,
different attitudes that we bring to our daily lives for peace or for its absence, we can understand that not only meditation, prayer or invocation of the presence of someone superior can to bring the world closer or farther from peace, are attitudes that spring from the heart.
Thomas Aquinas established that faith is a supplement to reason, believing and having hope mean an attitude of faith in a better future, in times of pandemic and its consequences can be more difficult positive attitudes if we think only individually, but if we understand that it is a social problem and it is up to everyone to collaborate and deepen bonds of solidarity and mutual help, so that we can walk and evolve towards peace.
The difficulty in understanding these values is because we focus on our little world around us, instead of listening to broader voices that cry out for Peace and solidarity all over the world, it is also necessary to give a voice to those who are close and ask for greater collaboration, As the Bible warns Lk 4:24: “I tell you the truth, no prophet is welcomed in his own country”, everyone thinks because he is an ordinary person that his words are worth little or that they should not be taken very seriously, according to this In this passage, right after reading the passage from Isaiah in which Jesus confirms his mission (to set the captives free, to give sight to the blind and to proclaim the Good News to the poor) the people of his city Nazareth said: “Is not this the son of Joseph? “, so could the common people not spread and spread the good news and herald peace.
It is from the ambitions of power and influence that the powerful increase conflicts and extend their networks, they do not bring greater solidarity or wisdom, they bring a confusion of ideas and the profusion of division within the social bosom in situations of conflict and misunderstanding.
Peace needs a pause of solidarity, the recognition that even being in a lesser condition of strength, it also has its right to a healthy life and social peace.
War is always a contradiction of what is just and good for everyone, it is thus a one-sided view of the truth that in general ignores the desire and thought of the simple person.
There are forces that can change the course of catastrophe
27
Jan
The idea of some imminent catastrophe to happen is in the air, it’s
not just apocalyptics, but natural scientists who see planetary depletion (glaciers, species extinction, climate change, earthquakes, etc.), political scientists about the ideological tension that returns remembering the cold war, and it would be possible to avoid or at least have a positive reaction to it, the pandemic looks like it was a training and the rehearsal doesn’t look good.
One of the recent mysterious discoveries made by astronomers is that an object in our “galactic backyard”, which means at 4 thousand light years, a space object was found, as being a neutral star or white dwarf are only hypotheses, in which this object produces powerful beams of energy, the strange object (pictured) launches the beam of powerful energy that crosses the line of sight of the earth observed by astronomers and published in the journal Nature (see in ICRAR), are something unusual in space observations.
Natasha Hurley-Walker, from Curtin University’s International Center for Radio Astronomy Research, leads the team that made the discovery and stated: “This object was appearing and disappearing for hours in our observation…. It was kind of scary for an astronomer because there is nothing known in the sky that does that.”
There are also powerful forces that act in our midst, it is not just about cheap exploitations of prayers or positive feeling that can lead to the improvement of an environment and people, a set of words and actions taken in a positive direction for a given problem can and should able to resolve or change situations where the problem or conditions are great.
In addition to the pandemic, which some want to decree the end as if it were that simple, we have the tension of an imminent war, and we should have no doubt that all people who can speak, ask, meditate or pray that an atrocity of this size does not occur. they must do it, in war only civilians, the poor and the weakest who suffer, there is no palpable or healthy solution that comes from provoked catastrophes.
Mysterious object unlike anything astronomers have seen before – ICRAR
An appeal for peace
26
Jan
Tensions on the borders between Russia and Ukraine are growing,
after stationing more than 100,000 men in the northern region of Russia, to the north, while a good region of Ukraine continues with conflicts in the cities of Luhansk and Donesk, where the rebels pro-Russians still control part of the territory and it is a region where more than 50% of the population speaks Russian as their native language.
The crisis already reached its peak in 2014, when Ukrainians deposed pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych, in demonstrations that became known as EuroMaidan because most Ukrainians supported joining the Eurozone and the president did not, after several battles, some bloody with armed struggles, the president was deposed and Petro Poroshenko was elected, who promised to fight corruption and pacify the country, and in 2019 the screenwriter and actor Volodymyr Zelensky was elected, Ukraine is semi-presidential, so the prime minister effectively governs, currently is Denys Shmygal.
Elections will take place next year and the president occupies the third position, so Russia knows the internal fragility, while making Ukraine a NATO country means the defeat of pro-Russian forces operating in the Luhansk and Donesk region.
The talks that are taking place today with the presence of France, Germany and Ukraine with Russia will have as their main agenda the issue of the internal conflict in northern Ukraine, since the United States and the United Kingdom follow a line of confrontation with Putin and not rule out economic punishments, and in case of invasion retaliation, both countries have already sent troops and armaments in support of Ukraine, as have Lithuania, Estonia and Latvia, while Belarus (which borders Ukraine) received fighter jets and weapons.
Russia has carried out war exercises in the Black Sea and is expected to do joint training with Belarus next month, as negotiations ramp up Putin while increasing pressure with military forces at the borders, repeating that he does not intend to invade Ukraine but the The list of demands it makes is huge, the main one being that Ukraine not join NATO, but it doesn’t give in to anything.
China’s position is discreet so far, just remember that China is Ukraine’s biggest trading partner and a major buyer of grain and meat.
However, the current crisis is already compared to the missile crisis in Cuba in the 60’s, more precisely in 1962 when the world was close to a world war.
As of today (26/01) Ukraine government websites have suffered a strong hacker attack and few government systems are down, in response a cyberattack on Belarusian railways brought trains to a standstill.
James Webb arrives at his destination
25
Jan
Exactly one month ago, the new James Webb Space Telescope
observatory (JWST Nasa) arrived yesterday at 17:00 (Brasília time) in a region where with a minimum of fuel consumption he will be able to remain in orbit, called the Lagrange L2 point, which is actually a region between the Earth and the Sun where the centripetal (attractive) force is balanced with a centrifugal force.
In fact, they are regions and therefore called orbital islands, every planet in the solar system has Lagrange Points and as they move away from the Sun these islands are larger, the island related to the earth is about 800,000 km wide, the which in spatial terms is small, the point L2 for example is 5 million km from Earth and still very far from Mars, 57.6 million is the distance from our neighboring planet.
The observations will still take 5 months to calibrate all equipment, adjust the mirror and aim for the first targets.
Now it will be 5 months of work for Webb to send the first images on his “targets in the infrared universe”, he will not look for exoplanets or new points, but point to known points and make measurements more precise and with greater definition, Webb’s mirrors ( hexagonal) that should have a complicated and fine adjustment will have up to 5 times the power of Hubble’s mirrors, in addition to using a more sophisticated technology that is infrared, where you can “see” by observing the light strongly “deflected to the red” of distant objects and can peer through clouds of murky dust, it will be able to sift through exoplanet atmospheres identifying gases with greater precision.
More than 1,000 teams of astronomers from around the world have requested time on the Webb in its first year and 287 have already been lucky enough to be pioneers, among the questions from these teams are looking at the ice-covered oceans on Uranus’ 27 moons, the icy giants Uranus. and Neptune can explain much of the origin of galactic systems, look at black holes that are of average size and resolve conflicting measurements on the rate of expansion of the universe and generally speaking will use Webb for two dominant themes: time and distance between opposite extremes in the universe. universe: the early universe and the closest planetary systems and their dilemmas.
In addition to these great themes, a topic that arouses curiosity, although it is due to a childish aspect of aliens, is what is called biosignature, that is, real conditions of life, which in fact do not find “beings” but the conditions of past or future existence. of them are: gaseous, direct or indirect products of the metabolism of living beings, of surface, of spectral results resulting from the radiation reflected by organisms, and, temporal, which are responses related to seasonal changes in the biosphere where there is, for example, diurnal and nocturnal variation of CO2, some biosignatures can be found, beings are still left to the imagination, it is clear that some biological form can exist in such an infinite space of probabilities.
Missing data and missing facts
24
Jan
The covid is advancing and although the predominance is of the 
ômicron variable, there is already a new IHU variant detected in France, the little testing and the number of asymptomatic cases indicate that the numbers can be much higher and therefore alarming, if in fact many cases are mild, the expansion is serious because it can lead to many people with the necessary comorbidities to make the cases complicated.
Everyone has a relative, friend or acquaintance with Covid now, in addition to public figures: players and coaches, journalists, television presenters, artists, etc. the number of cases is probably much higher than the public statistics that are released.
Vaccination of children has started, but it is important to say that the largest number of inpatients continues to be adults, not precise data, but just ask a friend or relative who works in a health unit to confirm, so a protocol policy is also needed for adults, many scientists and authorities, the WHO itself, insist that the pandemic is not over.
Because it could become an endemic disease, it is true, we can go there in a few months, say some of the scientific community, such as the BBC, expressing the opinion of Professor David Heumann, of the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine: “It will continue for a long time to become endemic,” he said, referring to the fact that all viruses become endemic and are treated seasonally like the flu and other coronaviruses.
But the newspaper itself emphasizes that Covid-19 evolved quite unpredictably and, according to experts, the Delta variant could have been much worse, the fact is that in that case there was a health policy and a confrontation with the pandemic, now so much Both the public and the authorities seem to think that the omicron variant is good, there are even those who think it is absurd that such “herd immunity” would be good, that is, the vast majority of people having passed through the virus.
WHO Director-General Tedros A. Ghebreyesus declared last week: “Make no mistake, the omicron causes hospitalizations and deaths, and even the least serious cases overwhelm healthcare facilities.”
We remember that this was the original negationist thesis, and to reaffirm it now, even recognizing that the prevailing variant today is less serious, would be a very big mistake.
Language and empathy
21
Jan
José Saramago expressed this about the opinion that people have
on different subjects: “The problem is not that people have opinions, this is great. The problem is that they have opinions without knowing what they are talking about”, in times of social media it is very common to repeat illustrious strangers because they said an impact phrase, but when it is placed in an appropriate context or if one penetrates the subject in question, one can have a more sensible opinion.
Everything is controversial today and in a way almost everything has become mere opinion, the doxa of the Greeks, in this context the problem of language is extrapolated and empathy is increasingly rare in everyday language, if the problem at the origin of modern society in classical antiquity was sophistry, everything was argued just to please the ruling power, the problem today is to see this disseminated in everyday language, care with language, respect for others and respectful listening must be part of empathic language.
It is not just central politics that has deteriorated, or democracy that has gone into crisis, the choices of savior leaders of the homeland, the little discussion of the de facto problems that affect the population, in full pandemic expansion little is said about effective measures against it. , just to give a serious example, the whole problem seems to be the vaccination of children, which is undoubtedly urgent, but everyone has several cases of family or close infection in the neighborhoods where they live.
Re-educating everyday language, reintroducing respect for any citizen, of any race, color or religion, should be a common effort to improve social empathy.
Even in religious language, previously extremely respectful and loving, a more separatist and isolationist conception seems to evolve where the different is isolated and frowned upon.
It is necessary to find space, time and place where the first truths can be spoken, where the original cultures can manifest and be heard.
In many cultures, religions and theories there is a central node there where the deepest truths are spoken.
The biblical passage in which Jesus reveals who he really is and what he came to should be the central point of analysis of his language and his mission, went to Nazareth, the city where he was raised and could be seen as an ordinary person, an empathic attitude, going the synagogue on the Sabbath day they gave the book of the prophet Isaiah (Is 61) and there he read: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, for he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor: he has sent me to proclaim the deliverance of the prisoners and, for the blind, the recovery of sight; to give freedom to the oppressed, he sent me to proclaim a year of favor from the Lord”, closed the book and then surprised everyone by saying: “Today this passage of Scripture that you have just heard has been fulfilled” (Lk 1:14). -21) (In the photo the signature of the prophet Isaiah, National Geographic).
Verbal, mixed and mystical language
20
Jan
Verbal language is one in which we find only words (it can be
primary, secondary or written orality), while non-verbal language involves gestures, visual signs, images, figures, drawings, photos, colors and even music, but communication can be realized beyond the gesture and then becomes a mystical communication.
It is not specific to religions, close people, lovers and even children can communicate with this perfection without the exclusive use of verbal or written language, it is beyond autosuggestion involves the theme that we develop further behind empathy, the vigor of a loving relationship or simply a great opening of the soul.
But the mystical language to make itself revealed to many and to be understood uses mythical resources, figures of speech, parables and even poetry, as Heidegger already thought who considered it an “other function” of language, the verses are rich in metaphors. , symbols and stories such as the passage of the Samaritan who helps a person who was robbed and attacked on the road to explain that helping the Other, mercy with those who suffer and helping is always a divine “will” for man.
However, it happens that many passages are read and analyzed out of context or out of the hermeneutic meaning of their realization, if in the past several linguistic resources were needed to read mystical documents, among them the Bible, the Quran or the book of Vedas, it does not mean that they can be read without the necessary hermeneutics.
Also updating them just to make political use, whatever the ideological tendency that makes it is a suspect hermeneutic because it depends on a certain historical conception, and we know that the sacred text, except for its contextual reading, must refer to a timeless and divine reality. aspatial (although the term does not exist), but considering the earthly life of everyone who reads it, it is on this that a good hermeneutic must be based.
The Bible does not mean anything other than what was written from a verbal word, the Christian gospels represent a review and a re-reading of the facts and verbal accounts of the early times of Christians that began with the public life of Jesus, period of domination of the Roman Empire and in which, besides him, many others claimed to be prophets.
The mystical language finds correspondence when a certain soul is in tune with the “divine will”, in the Christian saying, attentive to the Holy Spirit and having a special grace for this, which is very different from common influencers in our days due to the media powers and to the appeals to our human needs, one must be attentive to the divine, of course this is for those who believe, although also a perfect non-verbal communication can perfectly happen between those who do not believe, but it will be devoid of any divine revelation.
Language, speaking and native culture
19
Jan
In the work of Heidegger: Hölderlin and the essence of poetry, 
read in Heidegger (1992) speaks of the essence of poetry as a type of primordial language, an original speech that precedes and makes possible the common language, the communication, this refers to an unprecedented fusion of horizons in language and language, classically defines language as: “it is an organized set of elements (sounds and gestures) that enable the communication of a given nation or culture”, while language would encompass a broader set that includes the ability of human beings to develop and understand the language, as if it were possible to dissociate it from contexts, cultures and forms of communication linked to culture.
The common language in which a certain original culture is communicated, keeps its own forms of a linguistic code that is necessary for each original language and develops in a creative way in order to preserve it, this speech (or word) is said to be that one. who names the gods, and does so to respond to a cultural appeal.
If in the past narratives included myths, symbols and poetic hooks to connect the narrative, today it is no different, there is always in speech some belief and some fantasy, without which poetic language would be a mere exercise in rhetoric, and it is not, and this appeal to fantasy, imagination and the transcendent is part of the human and the divine.
Wanting all speech to be pragmatic and objective is to reduce it to the context of pure formal logic, scientific exercise also often needs some exercise in the beyond, in the imagination to find answers that are not just there as a logical equation.
It is not pure daydreaming, beliefs and imaginaries have always been part of human history, it is a just desire to go further, to seek higher flights and to imagine as possible something beyond the boring and heavy day to day, even though it may contain joys. and flavors, the threshold of openness to different original cultures cannot be linked only to objective and simple realism.
In the photo above, a syncretic church built in Kazan, started in 1992, therefore, in the post-Soviet period, capital of Tatarstan (Russian Republic, but with a totally different culture) where, even with the predominance of Islam followed by the Orthodox Church, it is at the same time a symbol of resistance to the Russian linguistic complex and capable of building a work of such great significance where different religions can express themselves, an eclectic work by the architect Ildar Khanov.
HEIDEGGER, M. (1992) Arte y poesía. Argentina, Buenos Aires: Fondo de Cultura Económica.
Truth and language
18
Jan
Is it possible to really speak? or to ask a more contemporary
question, is it possible to deny the truth without falling into relativism? Only the logical truth that comes from Parmenides “being is and non-being is not”, was expressed until very recently as the only truth, but it is the foundation of positivism and dualistic logic, the idea of considering historicity and the hermeneutic circularity places subject and object within a relationship with language.
In this scope of the language of language, truth is re-signified, no longer conceived as unique, as a faithful description, and starting to be seen as a partial, creative but limited redescription of things, as a possible interpretation in a given context and cultural situation determination. , for this it is necessary to understand language as something prior to everyday language, what Heidegger called attention to in Hölderlin’s poetics as the essence of poetry as a type of primordial language, an originary speech that precedes and makes possible the common language, the Communication.
How then is it possible to speak of the truth? It is only possible to speak of the truth taking into account the historicity and hermeneutic circularity of subject and object, which are within the scope of language. Thus, the truth is re-signified, no longer conceived as unique, as a faithful description, starting to be seen as a partial, creative and limited redescription of things, as an interpretation among other possible ones. One possibility of speaking in truth is through language. But for that, it is necessary to resort to an understanding of language that is prior to the language of everyday life, of communication. In Hölderlin and the Essence of Poetry, Heidegger (1992, p. 125-148) speaks of the essence of poetry as a type of primordial language, an originary speech that precedes and makes possible the common language, the communication;
Since language is the mediation of our relationship with being, it is what establishes this relationship, more clearly what is said in Heidegger: “where does man assume the requirement to enter the essence of something? Man can only assume this demand from where he receives it. It receives it in the appeal of language … it is language that, first and ultimately, beckons us to the essence of something” (HEIDEGGER, 2002, P. 167-168).
Thus, the truth must be understood in the context of the linguistic turn (or reversal), the contemporary rediscovery of the importance of language and it cannot be separated from the original historicity, the one that refers to the culture of the peoples and religions of the past and the present.
HEIDEGGER, M. (2002). Ensaios e leituras (Essays and lectures). Brazil, Petrópolis: ed. Vozes.
