And Justice For All

The other day I was watching this football match when a couple of players started arguing. The referee was pretty far and looking somewhere else but, when he did notice the situation, his resolution was fast: to present both of them with the yellow card. This reminded me of the typical kindergarden/primary school teacher who, when confronted with two arguing/fighting kids, often decides to ground them both.

This is indeed the typical behaviour of adults when dealing with children or, if it is not, then maybe I was just really unlucky during my childhood. I still remember that often, when kids caught in this situation tried to explain what started the fights, the only reply they would get would be "I don't care, you're grounded!". It's funny that our attitude towards children in this matter violates some ground principles of our law system. For instance every defendant is entitled to explain his acts, besides the even more famous innocent until proven guilty principle. It is not uncommon for a bullied child to be punished for being involved in skirmishes. This should be totally unacceptable.

Another thing I remember vividly is how teachers apply global punishments for particular infractions. A whole class may have to stay longer in the classroom, or miss some interesting schooltrip, due to one single student's misbehaviour. This is, in my opinion, awfully misdirected education. There is nothing more revolting and angering for a child than to be punished for something they didn't do. Worst of all, the enforcer is totally aware of their innocence, yet still finds it ok to go ahead with it. Moreover, children who misbehave badly tend to be less receptive to their colleagues "suffering". It is thus not likely that they will change their behaviour out of compassion for their poor fellow students who get punished for no reason.

If we want our children to form good ideals of fairness and justice, then perhaps we should rethink our attitude towards them altogether.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

Cute yet dangerous

The newspaper Metro published this very interesting news on March 22nd, entitled "São lindos e ainda salvam o planeta", meaning They're beautiful and, on top of that, they save the planet. It basicly applauds the new environmentalists' trend to use cute and fluffy animais to raise people's awareness and help them  protect the environment in several ways.

You don't really need a degree in psychology to assertain that this is a good idea (in the sense that it will work). Nobody cares about some ugly bush or spider, but by all means please save the dolphins and the koalas! In fact I've already written about this issue previously in 2010, in the post "Who Cares?". Curiously enough, that post also emerged has a response to a news from Metro. Now that I think of it, I believe those were the only two times I've seen the term fluffy being used in a newspaper.

What I want to talk about now is not that irrational concern for cute species, but rather how using those images to make people more interventive may not be as harmless as it might seem at first glance.

I'd like to start by going a bit against the generally accepted theory that it's big corporate interests, in all their greed, that are destroying the planet while we all, in our best of intentions, stand powerless against them. There are many flaws to this reasoning. First, we should never forget that these big mean corporations are ultimately working for us. Sure, we all hate oil companies and how they're careless in their handling of oil and so on. But we also get furious when fuel prices rise. Or when clothes get more expensive. We all like to act as if protecting the environment is effortless and comes with loads of advantages and no cost. But, be sure of it, protecting the environment can be very expensive sometimes. As an example, I remember this time when a professor of mine was talking about this project he'd worked on, to install some power lines in Portugal. They had this (cheap) project to make the connection through air cables but then some environment protection organisation stood against it by arguing that it would be harmful for this local bat population. The court decided in their favour, and the cables had to be installed underground. This change made the whole project cost ten times more and of course it's us, consumers, who are paying for it. Another example could be Portugal's heavy investment in renewable energies over the last years, usually loved by the crowd. Thing is, it seems that, were we not to be using any renewable energies at all, our electricity bill would be 30% cheaper. That's a huge cost, when all hell runs loose after each few percents increase. Mind that I'm not defending that we shouldn't care about the bats or using renewable energies; I'm just saying we also need to be aware of the costs of doing so.

Another critic to that line of thinking is that, nowadays, we're far from powerless. Besides changing our habits towards more environment friendly ones, we can also fight those big mean companies through public journalism, by divulging their acts. In fact, internet has made bad publicity so poweful that it's precisely the bigger companies that are most likely to make big contributions and gestures towards environment protection. Of course one can question their motives, but the result is the same.

Back to the initial theme, those fluffy animais are dangerous because they make us blind to the downsides of their (over?) protection. Of course, as the Metro news reported, they're mostly used for higher purposes, such as saving their uglier brothers and sisters. Yet this means that we're somewhat being tricked and manipulated into helping a cause. And if the purpose of any action is ill-defined or hidden, how are we supposed to make just and informed decisions? As I've already tried to demonstrate, going as green as possible might not always be the right decision.

Some might claim that environmentalists are reasonable people with good intentions and so will use this "new" persuasion technique with care, parsiomony and responsibility. Still, as we all know, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Moreover, focusiing all important decision making in some enlightened few is both dangerous (everyone is wrong sometimes) and dictatorship like.

Other possible argument in defense of this behaviour is that our consumer habits and lifestyles have led us so far from being green that, even if we turn the meter as far as we can on the other direction, we still wouldn't be too green. Perhaps. Problem is, in all arguments, it's the most fanatic who make the most noise.

In the end, I guess we'll have to hope that reason and good sense will prevail over sensacionalism, both amonst environmentalists and ourselves.


Filipe Baptista de Morais

It's in Belgium

A couple of weeks ago I travelled to Belgium for a long weekend. Now, Belgium is quite a small country so it’s amazing the amount of stuff you can do in four days. In terms of prices, things are quite expensive (for Portuguese standards); staying over at a friend’s ensured the trip remained within budged.

Food is pretty good in Belgium, with the ever-present exception of coffee. Still, Belgian waffles and chocolate certainly help overcome that. Especially when you put them together. There’s also beer for every taste, so it’s (almost) impossible not to enjoy one.

It’s hard to judge the weather from a four days sample, but I hear it’s quite awful. Can’t really complain though, since it never rained during my stay (though it snowed quite a lot). Nevertheless, the sun does not seem to shine the same way it does in Portugal. Yep, you should definitely come here.

In what regards Belgian people, I’m afraid I didn’t find them very friendly. Helpful, certainly, but not really friendly. Could have been just a stream of bad luck though.

Despite not having a government for quite some time, things appear to run pretty smooth in Belgium. Of course when you come from Portugal every other place seems to display military-like organization. I recall using this software tool for train travels planning, available at their public transports’ (which are quite cheap by the way) website. I loved it so much that I made some nice comments about it to my Belgian friends. Of course 15 minutes after that I was boarding the wrong train, which ultimately led to my arrival in Brussels two hours after schedule and forced me to take a cab. Irony’s a bitch. I first thought I’d messed up somehow (I really didn’t want to blame that neat software tool), but I happened to meet some nice Czech women (psychologists attending some international conference, though they seemed more interested in partying) who had made exactly the same mistake. Guess I should thank the most nice and helpful (and gorgeous) ticket lady, for sorting everything out and letting me ride back to Leuven when the train was not supposed to be carrying passengers anymore.

Having given my overall impression on  Belgium, I’ll now write a few lines about each city/town that I’ve visited, in chronological order.

Antwerp. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from Antwerp, since opinions seemed to diverge a lot. Now I can testify that it’s definitely worth seeing. The city pulses with movement and has this very modern appeal, while retaining some old beautiful buildings and its famous Cathedral of Our Lady. The city park (Stradspark), is also very pretty as is the square featuring the city hall and the statue of Brabo, founder of Antwerp. The area near the harbour is a must, and no tourist should pass by the MAS museum without going in. 1€ is all it takes to get access to eleven floors dedicated to an equal number of different and interesting themes, as well as a panoramic view over the city. Not far from it there’s a memorial to the deceased in both World Wars. Right next to it the sharp eyed reader will find a lovers’ heart (kinda like a lovers’ bridge, but instead of a bridged you have a heart). Most unfortunately,  I didn’t have time to visit the castle, also along the coast line. You’ll also find an amazingly high number of gay couples (mostly men) in Antwerp. Which, if you take into account that Antwerpian women are quite beautiful, should make it some kind of paradise for straight single men: odds are the city’s full of gorgeous and lonely women!

Leuven. I’d never heard great things about Leuven, so I only went there in order to visit a handful of friends.  True enough, the city lacks touristic attractions at level with the others’. Still, Leuven has this distinct and particular appeal. Perhaps because it’s mostly a students’ town, one really does feel “right” in there. The bars area is pretty nice, and it features the longest (combined) balcony in Europe. Though I did not have time to go there since it’s in the outskirts, the area around the faculty of biological engineering seemed quite nice. Bikes (and people riding them) all over the place also help establish that cozy feeling of belonging.

Bruges (It’s in Belgium). Just a few days before departing to Belgium I saw this movie, “In Bruges”,

since I’d heard it portrayed the city rather well. I must say it’s a pretty good movie, so I’d definitely recommend it whether you’re planning on actually going there or not. It’s funny that, while the entire movie seems to be a tribute to the city, the main character utterly hates it. In fact, when seriously wounded and in risk of dying, his thoughts are “Fuck man, maybe that’s what hell is… the entire rest of eternity spent in fucking Bruges! And I really really hoped I wouldn’t die…”. Despite the character’s thoughts, Bruges is quite the thing. Everything seems so beautiful and from another world, like time stopped in there centuries ago. It’s amazing how cars seem so out of place in there. I guess the best advice I can give to future travelers is to simply walk around and, if possible, get lost in there. Just make sure to go up the Belfry; the long, narrow (and I do mean NARROW) stairs are a lot of trouble, but the view is astonishing. We were lucky enough to be presented with this eerie mist, making it all seem some kind of fairytale. Exactly as in the movie! Animal lovers will certainly be in awe with the swans all over the water courses. It does live up to the designation “Venice of the North”, even it only features one canal. They say Bruges is really beautiful at night, but unfortunately we had to move on before sunset.

Gent. The city is quite similar to Bruges in its medieval look. In terms of interiors it may even be prettier: it features plenty of beautiful churches to see. It also had more canals than Bruges. Still, something's missing... perhaps that eerie mist that makes everything look so surreal. The castle is a real wonder, and you can climb all the way up and walk along the wals: you'll be rewarded with quite the view. It also has a Belfry, but I didn't go up that one. 

Tervuren. It's a really small town just outside Brussels. I didn't really go into the town, just the Royal Museum for Central Africa which is its main attraction. The weather didn't allow us to walk along its gardens, but the palace itself is quite pretty. Inside, you can learn a lot about Central Africa, Congo in particular. It has replicas of many of the existing wild life. It's also a great place to find different kinds of souvenirs.

Brussels. I must say I was very disappointed with something in Brussels... it's really hard to find someone who speaks (proper) English! I'd always been told that Brussels was an international city, the heart and capital of Europe, so that was definitely a turndown. Apart from that, I really liked the capital of Belgium The Grànd Place is amazing: you don't really know where to look since there are interesting buildings all around. The comic strips painted on the facades make a perfect excuse for walking all around the city; you can get a map with their positions and try to find and photograph them all. Sightseeing turns into some kind of amusing quest! It took me around six hours (I only had a short lunch break, but it was snowing heavily so that slowed me down) and still I missed some of them. The city parks are beautiful when covered with snow. The Manneken Pis, often used as a symbol of the city, was rather disappointing, even though I'd already been warned. It's funny how something can disappoint us, despite the fact that we're already expecting to be disappointed. Guess one can't truly expect to be let down... By the way, did you know there are two other pissing statues in Brussels, portrating a girls and a dog?  You can find chocolate shops all over the place; there's the big brands (Leonidas, Cote d'Or, etc... ) , of course, but I found it far more interesting to stumble into these small artisan shops and buy, say, a chocolate train. Finally, I'd definitely recomment visiting the Parlamentarium, the visitors' centre for the European Parliament. You'll need some time though: I spent around two hours in there and still half of it was left unseen.

Filipe Baptista de Morais