Many do not know that the third largest airplane manufacturer is a Brazilian company named Embraer. Specially for we that graduated at ITA, Embraer has a particular importance because it was for the success that Embraer now has that our university was originally created: to build the human resources to start and populate the Brazilian aeronautics industry.
Although I met with several people that work at Embraer, it was not until last Monday, that I was able to enter an Embraer airplane, more specifically the Air France ERJ 145 with capacity for 50 passengers. My impression of the plane was really good. Though it is smaller than the usual Airbus that is commonly used in these regional flights, it was really a comfortable trip.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Amazing Chomsky
Today I watched a documentary about Noam Chomsky called Rebel without phase (available in youtube), containing several of his interviews about, among other subjects, politics, culture, society and history. Chomsky is amazing for several reasons: he is arguably the most important linguistic in our history; despite of his scientific and scholar duties, he is an active peace and political activist; for instance, since the 60s he continuously criticizes American foreign policies and American society; it is unbelievable the amount of knowledge he has and how much he reads to keep him updated; for example he reads per day an average of six newspapers and per month about eighty journals! But what II found the most amazing about him is that, with his very calm tone, he is able to enlighten an audience about any issue, never mind how polemic it is, with a flawless reasoning based on well constructed arguments and illustrative examples.
I leave the suggestion: Noam Chomsky!
I leave the suggestion: Noam Chomsky!
Friday, March 14, 2008
New Capital Sins
This week the Christian Church released a new, longer, list of the capital sins, by augmenting the original list, composed of the seven original capital sins, with the following six acts:
- Perform a genetic modification;
- Pollute the environment;
- Cause social injustice;
- Cause poverty;
- Be extremely rich;
- Use drugs.
Secret for doing a PhD: Motivation
Today was really strange. Though I already found some interesting stuff and wrote some papers/drafts, I woke up very worried about my PhD progress, specially when thinking about how much more is needed to have a whole thesis. So after some initial hesitation, I decided to go to the lab and try to work a bit to fill out the gaps needed to finish my work. First thing I did, after arriving at the lab, was to go to my supervisor's office and discuss some issues that I found interesting and just after some minutes my mood was completely different: I was excited again! Motivation was definitely the necessary ingredient for changing my mood from completely desperate to full of hope!
Monday, March 10, 2008
Xenophobia in Europe
It is tragic to see an increase of aversion towards foreigners in Europe. Just to see what extreme right wing candidates say and how much support they have is really disappointing in the so called civilized continent. After some time in Europe and staying for some time in three different European countries: Germany, Portugal and France, I could see that Xenophobia may come from completely different reasons:
1) In Germany, the hostility towards foreigners, specially the Turkish community, comes mostly from the unemployed, lower class Germans that think that foreigners are stealing their jobs.
2) In Portugal, there is clear the separation between Portuguese, Brazilian and Africans. The Portuguese still regard Brazilians better than Africans because Brazilians, specially in the last years, come to Portugal in more "respected" positions; for instance as Dentists, in Marketing positions; while the Africans have the less paid jobs like maids, electricians, plumbers, etc.
3) In France, it is not really more an employment issue than a class issue. More than two hundreds years after the French revolutions (1st and 2nd), the French society values more class and etiquette than education and qualification. This is why in Paris everyone is so well dressed; they want to be part of the aristocracy. So differently from Germany and Portugal, the origin of the French Xenophobia is not from economic reasons, but from cultural/historical one: the French higher class still believe that they have a different blood: le sang bleu.
1) In Germany, the hostility towards foreigners, specially the Turkish community, comes mostly from the unemployed, lower class Germans that think that foreigners are stealing their jobs.
2) In Portugal, there is clear the separation between Portuguese, Brazilian and Africans. The Portuguese still regard Brazilians better than Africans because Brazilians, specially in the last years, come to Portugal in more "respected" positions; for instance as Dentists, in Marketing positions; while the Africans have the less paid jobs like maids, electricians, plumbers, etc.
3) In France, it is not really more an employment issue than a class issue. More than two hundreds years after the French revolutions (1st and 2nd), the French society values more class and etiquette than education and qualification. This is why in Paris everyone is so well dressed; they want to be part of the aristocracy. So differently from Germany and Portugal, the origin of the French Xenophobia is not from economic reasons, but from cultural/historical one: the French higher class still believe that they have a different blood: le sang bleu.
Friday, March 7, 2008
Stereotypes
This week in my French class, we were discussing about the different misconceptions (just a note, curious to see how many words in English come from French: mis = put) and stereotypes different people have from each other. For instance, my French professor said that French think all Brazilians wear only havaianas and stay at the beach surrounded by mulatas in strings. Later, I commented that Brazilians think that French are not very hygienic; for instance we often say, when someone does not take shower but only puts perfume, that he/she took a French bath. My professor was really surprised to hear about this.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
So much for an electrical eng. degree!
The past weeks, or I should rather say months, my computer was giving me a very hard time. Whenever I needed more processing power, such as when I watched a video at youtube, the computer restarted. I rapidly assumed that it is an overheating problem, which I confirmed using some temperature monitoring softwares. To solve this I took my computer yesterday to a computer maintenance store, where the technician told me that it would take me 49 euros to clean the computer and supposedly avoid this overheating.
49 euros!!! I thought. That is really a lot of money just to clean a computer, so I immediately rejected the offer and came back home. Today, I decided to do the job by myself. So there I go and open the computer, of course unplugging it first and removing its battery. But immediately after, I face the first challenge: the screws! They are so tight that it takes me almost half an hour to remove them all. The second challenge is to open the laptop's case. After several attempts, I was not able to open it, even after almost breaking it with the screw driver! However, I could partially open it so that I could see the circuits and manage to clean the laptop's cooling device.
After all this drama to open and clean the computer, I close the case and turn on the computer. My worst fears come true: first neither the laptop's keyboard neither the the wireless adapter are working, and second the problem of overheating is still there!
49 euros!!! I thought. That is really a lot of money just to clean a computer, so I immediately rejected the offer and came back home. Today, I decided to do the job by myself. So there I go and open the computer, of course unplugging it first and removing its battery. But immediately after, I face the first challenge: the screws! They are so tight that it takes me almost half an hour to remove them all. The second challenge is to open the laptop's case. After several attempts, I was not able to open it, even after almost breaking it with the screw driver! However, I could partially open it so that I could see the circuits and manage to clean the laptop's cooling device.
After all this drama to open and clean the computer, I close the case and turn on the computer. My worst fears come true: first neither the laptop's keyboard neither the the wireless adapter are working, and second the problem of overheating is still there!
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
My (not) accepted paper.
Since me and Dale wrote our CSL paper last year, Incorporating tables into proofs, I've been trying to extend its results and search for more interesting applications that could be, in the future, included in a journal version of this paper. More specifically, I've explored one of the sections of the paper which proposes to represent a proof as a partially ordered set of atoms, called table, that could be used as a proof object in the Proof Carrying Code framework. I developed an algorithm to extract from an existing proof a tree of tables, showed that one could easily reconstruct a proof where atomic formulas are not proved twice, and also showed that the algorithm's complexity is a bit more than linear (to be more precise: n s log n, where s is the upper bound in the size of program's clauses).
I submitted, to CiE 2008, a paper titled Using tables to obtain non-redundant proofs, containing this algorithm and these results. Finally, last week I received an e-mail from the program chair saying that the paper is accepted to be presented in the conference, but not to be published in the conference's pre-proceedings. The reviews were very curious; the first reviewer seemed to know focusing and proof theory very well and recommended my paper to be published; the second reviewer wrote a very small paragraph criticizing the paper's presentation, giving the impression to not have put much effort in reading the paper, and gave me a borderline grade; the third reviewer appreciated the proof theoretical results but got me in the point that I didn't have more deeper experiments that would give a higher cogency to the applicability of my algorithm in PCC, but nevertheless, suggested my paper to be presented in the conference.
I am not sure what to think about this result. I am of course disappointed that it wasn't accepted for publication, but on the other hand, I wrote the article by myself (Dale was not very excited on this idea) and the comments were not too bad. As a consolation, I got a free trip to Athens in June, when I will have to present my results :).
I submitted, to CiE 2008, a paper titled Using tables to obtain non-redundant proofs, containing this algorithm and these results. Finally, last week I received an e-mail from the program chair saying that the paper is accepted to be presented in the conference, but not to be published in the conference's pre-proceedings. The reviews were very curious; the first reviewer seemed to know focusing and proof theory very well and recommended my paper to be published; the second reviewer wrote a very small paragraph criticizing the paper's presentation, giving the impression to not have put much effort in reading the paper, and gave me a borderline grade; the third reviewer appreciated the proof theoretical results but got me in the point that I didn't have more deeper experiments that would give a higher cogency to the applicability of my algorithm in PCC, but nevertheless, suggested my paper to be presented in the conference.
I am not sure what to think about this result. I am of course disappointed that it wasn't accepted for publication, but on the other hand, I wrote the article by myself (Dale was not very excited on this idea) and the comments were not too bad. As a consolation, I got a free trip to Athens in June, when I will have to present my results :).
Focusing Rules!
Me and Dale finished the last week a new paper, which we already submitted to IJCAR: Focusing in Linear Meta Logic. The paper shows that by changing focusing annotations in a same meta-logic specification one can encode different object-logics. There are several interesting observations and results in the paper: First, the specification we use is very declarative; for instance, object-logic rules do not contain side formulas. Second, we obtain adequacy results for several proof systems, from sequent calculus to natural deduction and tableaux systems. Third, from these adequacy results, one can interpret that these different systems are, in fact, just systems with different focusing annotations. Fourth, from these adequacy results and linear logic's focusing and cut-elimination theorems, we obtain new modular soundness and (relative) completeness results for all these systems.
We will only know if the paper is accepted in April. Hope the reviewers enjoy focusing as much as I do!
We will only know if the paper is accepted in April. Hope the reviewers enjoy focusing as much as I do!
Who can understand Girard?!
The name Jean-Yves Girard might be an unknown name for those outside the field of logic, but I can say that he is a G-E-N-I-O-U-S! His achievements are found in several fields, from proof-theory and type theory to complexity theory and computer science; for instance, linear logic, the logic of all logics, is one of his inventions.
In the next week, Girard is going give a series of lectures about his new and very exciting discoveries that relate hyperfinite factors, a subfield of linear algebra, and Ludics, a theory, closely related to games semantics, that uses the location of formulas instead of propositions. To follow his lectures, I've been trying to read, in the past couple of days, his last book The Blind Spot. However, the following problem is evident from the beginning: Girard is a terrible writer! It is simply impossible to follow his line of thought because each point he makes is miles away from the next point! It is so disappointing that makes me wonder: Who can understand Girard?!
In the next week, Girard is going give a series of lectures about his new and very exciting discoveries that relate hyperfinite factors, a subfield of linear algebra, and Ludics, a theory, closely related to games semantics, that uses the location of formulas instead of propositions. To follow his lectures, I've been trying to read, in the past couple of days, his last book The Blind Spot. However, the following problem is evident from the beginning: Girard is a terrible writer! It is simply impossible to follow his line of thought because each point he makes is miles away from the next point! It is so disappointing that makes me wonder: Who can understand Girard?!
Saturday, March 1, 2008
Religion
In the past months, I have been reading Richard Dawkins' recent book, The God Delusion, and it really made me think about how people are so deeply brainwashed by religion, usually with the most ridiculous ideas, that they become blind to common sense and, in some extreme cases, intolerant to other beliefs.
One good example of how religious beliefs can instigate, not only a person but an entire society, to ignore reason is the battle between the conflicting theories of Creation and Evolution. Creationism states that all living beings exist as they are because of an inherent "intelligent design" that is present in the DNA. While Evolution explains the existence of living beings by the process of Natural Selection, where beings more adaptable to its environment are selected from the beings less adaptable. Though there is a enormous amount of evidence supporting evolution and no evidence supporting Creationism, some states in the US have adopted Creationism in the educational curricula because of the pressure of religious groups that can't accept the Evolution theory, since it contradicts directly with Christian beliefs of how the world was created, but accept Creationism that supports these religious beliefs.
But why do people still believe in some Religious dogmas, despite the overwhelming amount of evidence against it? This is one question that Dawkins tries to answer in his book, for which I try to summarize. One problem with the Abrahamic Religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, is that all of them preach that faith is the greatest virtue. This is why a religious person still believes in dogmas that are proved wrong because it would require of him more faith to believe on it, and hence he would be regarded as more virtuous.
Dawkins uses the examples of Abrahamic Religions because both the autor and to the target western readers are more familiar with them. But one can't generalize this explanation to other religions, such as Hinduism, since they don't have a set of dogmas, and therefore, faith is not a cornerstone for the existence of Religion. And yet, Hindus often disregard evidence, for example, in India there is a generalized belief in astrology.
Dawkins, as an evolutionary biologist, gives a more satisfying explanation to another question, why are there so many religious people in the first place. His answer has to do with a misfiring of the following Darwinian characteristic: Children that believe and obey blindly to there parents have a higher probability to survive and hence, to give continuity to the species. This is simply because children do not have the time to verify the things said by parents; if for instance, a parent tells a child not to jump a cliff and this child does not obey, the result would be disastrous. Even though there is no Darwinian advantage for believing in Religion, a misfiring of this characteristic happens that results in children adopting the religious beliefs of their parents.
There are many other interesting issues discussed by Dawkins; for instance, he tries to argue why there is not a God; why religion can be bad, for which some reasons I commented here; where do our morals come from (perhaps I will discuss more about this topic later); and the conscious raising to not label a child with the religion of his/her parents.
One good example of how religious beliefs can instigate, not only a person but an entire society, to ignore reason is the battle between the conflicting theories of Creation and Evolution. Creationism states that all living beings exist as they are because of an inherent "intelligent design" that is present in the DNA. While Evolution explains the existence of living beings by the process of Natural Selection, where beings more adaptable to its environment are selected from the beings less adaptable. Though there is a enormous amount of evidence supporting evolution and no evidence supporting Creationism, some states in the US have adopted Creationism in the educational curricula because of the pressure of religious groups that can't accept the Evolution theory, since it contradicts directly with Christian beliefs of how the world was created, but accept Creationism that supports these religious beliefs.
But why do people still believe in some Religious dogmas, despite the overwhelming amount of evidence against it? This is one question that Dawkins tries to answer in his book, for which I try to summarize. One problem with the Abrahamic Religions: Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, is that all of them preach that faith is the greatest virtue. This is why a religious person still believes in dogmas that are proved wrong because it would require of him more faith to believe on it, and hence he would be regarded as more virtuous.
Dawkins uses the examples of Abrahamic Religions because both the autor and to the target western readers are more familiar with them. But one can't generalize this explanation to other religions, such as Hinduism, since they don't have a set of dogmas, and therefore, faith is not a cornerstone for the existence of Religion. And yet, Hindus often disregard evidence, for example, in India there is a generalized belief in astrology.
Dawkins, as an evolutionary biologist, gives a more satisfying explanation to another question, why are there so many religious people in the first place. His answer has to do with a misfiring of the following Darwinian characteristic: Children that believe and obey blindly to there parents have a higher probability to survive and hence, to give continuity to the species. This is simply because children do not have the time to verify the things said by parents; if for instance, a parent tells a child not to jump a cliff and this child does not obey, the result would be disastrous. Even though there is no Darwinian advantage for believing in Religion, a misfiring of this characteristic happens that results in children adopting the religious beliefs of their parents.
There are many other interesting issues discussed by Dawkins; for instance, he tries to argue why there is not a God; why religion can be bad, for which some reasons I commented here; where do our morals come from (perhaps I will discuss more about this topic later); and the conscious raising to not label a child with the religion of his/her parents.
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