Samba do ameríndio doido

ERA UMA VEZ UMA tribo feliz de caçadores-coletores. Um dia, de madrugada, eles têm a aldeia invadida e incendiada por caçadores de escravos maias, cujo líder mais parece um comandante americano no vietnã (manja aqueles sinaizinhos com os dedos?). Morre quase todo mundo. Mas Jaguar Paw (por que mantiveram o nome em inglês eu não sei, já que o filme é falado em yucateco) esconde sua mulher grávida e seu filho pequeno num buraco. E é capturado.

Os escravos são levados para uma metrópole maia qualquer, onde sacrifícios humanos acontecem a rodo no alto de pirâmides. Jaguar Paw jura vingança. É salvo da degola aos 47 do segundo tempo por um eclipse (alguém aí se lembra do desenho do Pernalonga na Távola Redonda? Pois a velocidade do eclipse é a mesma). Foge de flechas dos seus inimigos, é ferido, perseguido na floresta e consegue sozinho dar cabo de uma hunting party de 15 guerreiros maias fortemente armados. Sobram dois, que o ferem, mas ele é salvo mais uma vez aos 47 do segundo tempo. Pelos espanhóis.

Mulher e filhos resgatados, a família reunida se esconde na floresta. Os maus pagaram pelas suas atrocidades.

Esse é o enredo de Apocalypto, o novo filme de Mel Gibson. Agora que você já sabe o final, me agradeça por ter lhe poupado 15 reais e duas horas e meia de um atentado histórico, arqueológico e, sobretudo, cinematográfico.

Pílulas antideterministas do Dr. Hauser

WHAT'S IN A NAME? O americano Marc Hauser, estrela despontante da sociobiologia/etologia humana, que pouca gente teria dúvidas em apontar como "determinista", cita a seguinte passagem em seu livro Moral Minds:

"Kin selection and reciptocal altruism are plausible as far as they go but I find that they do not begin to square up to the formidable challenge of explaining cultural evolution and the immense differences between human cultures around the world (...) For an understanting of the evolution of modern man we must begin by throwing out the gene as the sole basis of our ideas on evolution."

Um pirulito para quem adivinhar o livro de onde ele tirou essa citação:

( ) It Ain't Necessarily So, de Richard Lewontin
( ) The Century of the Gene, de Evelyn Keller
( ) Horton Hears a Who, de Dr. Seuss
( ) The Selfish Gene, de Richard Dawkins

Climáticas

SAVE THE DATE
O IPCC lançará com pompa e circinstância seu AR4, ou "Assessment Report Four", em Paris no dia 2 de fevereiro. Quem leu o El País nos últimos dias já sabe o que o relatório dirá. E sabe que o chumbo é grosso.

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TON-SOUS-TON
O que o El País não disse, no entanto, foi que o tom de alarme do freaseado do "Summary for Policymakers" vem sendo consistentemente suavizado versão após versão. Cada vez que um draft é submetido aos governos, a coisa dá uma michada. Quem leu o Independent no ano passado sabe do que eu estou falando.

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ASSIM NA CIÊNCIA COMO NO FUTEBOL

O capítulo 2 do relatório, Impactos e Vulnerabilidade, tem entre seus autores 12 argentinos e três brasileiros. Dizem as más línguas que o número pode até se dever ao fato de que os vizinhos de baixo estão mais adiantados do que nós na pesquisa do assunto. Mas a "proximate causation" mais provável é o fato de que o chair do capítulo é um argentino, Oswaldo Canziani. Dále.

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NOSSA MULHER EM GENEBRA

Tem gente reclamando que o número desproporcionalmente baixo de brazucas no IPCC poderia ser bombado caso a brasileira Thelma Krug, membro do board do painel, fizesse um bocadinho de lobby.

Coalizão dos involuntários

DIANTE DA MINHA total falta do que dizer, reproduzo comentários de Paul Krugman sobre o Iraque. É a mesma ladainha liberal, mas gosto dela porque é a "nossa" ladainha.


The only real question about the planned ‘‘surge’’ in Iraq _ which is better described as a Vietnam-style escalation _ is whether its proponents are cynical or delusional.

Sen. Joseph Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, thinks they’re cynical. He recently told The Washington Post that administration officials are simply running out the clock, so that the next president will be ‘‘the guy landing helicopters inside the Green Zone, taking people off the roof.’’

Daniel Kahneman, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Science for his research on irrationality in decision-making, thinks they’re delusional. Kahneman and Jonathan Renshon recently argued in Foreign Policy magazine that the administration’s unwillingness to face reality in Iraq reflects a basic human aversion to cutting one’s losses _ the same instinct that makes gamblers stay at the table, hoping to break even.

Of course, such gambling is easier when the lives at stake are those of other people’s children.

Well, we don’t have to settle the question. Either way, what’s clear is the enormous price our nation is paying for President Bush’s character flaws.I began writing about the Bush administration’s infallibility complex, the president’s Captain Queeg-like inability to own up to mistakes, almost a year before the invasion of Iraq. When you put a man like that in a position of power _ the kind of position where he can punish people who tell him what he doesn’t want to hear, and base policy decisions on the advice of people who play to his vanity _ it’s a recipe for disaster.

Consider, on one side, the case of the CIA’s Baghdad station chief during 2004, who provided accurate assessments of the deteriorating situation in Iraq. ‘‘What is he, some kind of defeatist?’’ asked the president _ and according to The Washington Post, at the end of his tour, the station chief ‘‘was punished with a poor assignment.’’

On the other side, consider the men Bush has turned to since the midterm election. They constitute a remarkable coalition of the unwilling _ men who have been wrong about Iraq every step of the way, but aren’t willing to admit it.

The principal proponents of the ‘‘surge’’ are William Kristol of The Weekly Standard and Frederick Kagan of the American Enterprise Institute. Now, even if the Joint Chiefs of Staff hadn’t given the surge a thumbs down, Kristol’s track record should have been reason enough to ignore his advice. For example, early in the war, Kristol dismissed as ‘‘pop sociology’’ warnings that there would be conflict between Sunnis and Shiites and that the Shiites might try to create an Islamic fundamentalist state. He assured National Public Radio listeners that ‘‘Iraq’s always been very secular.’’

But Kristol and Kagan appealed to Bush’s ego, suggesting that he might yet be able to rescue his signature war. And am I the only person to notice that after all the Oedipal innuendo surrounding the Iraq Study Group _ Daddy’s men coming in to fix Junior’s mess, etc. _ Bush turned for advice to two other sons of famous and more successful fathers?Not that Bush rejects all advice from elder statesmen. We now know that he has been talking to Henry Kissinger. But Kissinger is a kindred spirit. In remarks published after his death, Gerald Ford said of his secretary of state, ‘‘Henry in his mind never made a mistake, so whatever policies there were that he implemented, in retrospect he would defend.’’

Oh, and Sen. John McCain, the first major political figure to advocate a surge, is another man who can’t admit mistakes. McCain now says that he always knew that the conflict was ‘‘probably going to be long and hard and tough’’ _ but back in 2002, before the Senate voted on the resolution authorizing the use of force, he declared that a war with Iraq would be ‘‘fairly easy.’’

Bush is expected to announce his plan for escalation in the next few days. According to the BBC, the theme of his speech will be ‘‘sacrifice.’’ But sacrifice for what? Not for the national interest, which would be best served by withdrawing before the strain of the war breaks our ground forces. No, Iraq has become a quagmire of the vanities _ a place where America is spending blood and treasure to protect the egos of men who won’t admit that they were wrong. AP-NY-