Second Coming of iPhone

@Bryan and Hugh: as punishment for your bickering you shall read every future blog posting of mine in their entirety

@Dad: I consider it a success, as well

@Sara: thank you so much. That really does mean a lot to me

@Kory: awesome quote. So true. Every time I hear someone criticized for “flip-flopping,” I think “well doesn’t that depend on which side is right?” Apparently these days it doesn’t

@Hugh: Announcement on June 9th, with availability retroactive 2 months and instantaneous delivery. Which means that as soon as you mentally consent to having your bank account deducted $400 you will discover that you already have the new iPhone, and your memory will be mani

pulated to make you remember you’ve had it since April. It’s a new service

@Dad: Let the mediation recommence!

@Yaly: that’s right. You have experienced firsthand the miracles of the Jesus Phone. And it WAS a miracle we got an A on that paper, don’t you doubt it

@Paloma: what did you expect? Come on, it’s me...

I arrived home tonight, still forlorn over the loss of my dear friend, Jesus Phone. I sat down here at my desk, and for some reason decided to hit the Wake button on iPhone, just for old times’ sake. Miraculously, after three days of total non-responsiveness (coincidence?), it came to life! Glory to Jesus (Phone)!!! 

And to think I doubted. Well from this point on, I swear to never question you, Jesus Phone. I will pay your wireless data fees willingly, even joyously. I will buy your second version immediately and rejoice when its price is dropped by 30%.

This also means, of course, that I have pictures of Rio. See link at bottom of post.

Rio was awesome. Honestly probably one of the most fun weekends I have had in a VERY long time. I was by myself, which actually turned out to be great because I was able to meet a lot of people. And by “a lot of people” I mean the 4 girls who shared my room at the hostel. Yes, I am a pimp.

I spent much of the time at the beach, which is quite an experience. First of all it’s jam-packed with people, and vendors, and soccer players, and beach chairs. Basically it’s difficult to walk there’s so much stuff everywhere. The ocean is very violent (hence my Jesus Phone crisis), although that could’ve just been temporary. 

One day I went to the Cristo Redentor, the cliché of all pictures of the city and probably one of the most photographed things on Earth. The sun was setting over the city and the horizon was a magnificent shade of orange - really a spectacular sight. And then I got to the top. A circus of people from all over the world greeted me there. Everyone speaking a different language, and everyone taking tons of pictures. Of course everyone thought they were really original taking pictures of themselves underneath the Christ statue raising their arms in imitation, despite the fact that at any given moment there were at least 5 people doing the exact same thing. To make things even crazier, there was a celebrity wedding going on in the small chapel underneath the statue, meaning tons of paparrazi, everyone crowding and craning to get a look, and a helicopter noisily circling overhead. Sheer madness.

The highlight of the trip, I must say, was Rocinha. Rocinha is Brazil’s largest and most famous (or should I say notorious) favela, or slum. In fact, as far as slums go, it is world famous. Movies such as City of God were filmed there, and it has entered the Brazilian consciousness as a symbol of the enormous underclass that brings so many complicated implications to issues such as urban development, public health, and income equality. 

First, some facts. It has a population of between 60,000 and 150,000, although the highest estimates reach 400,000 residents. For comparison, Laguna Niguel has a population of 66,000. And we’re talking about a single hillside here. For a slum, Rocinha is very highly developed. It has multiple banks, supermarkets, drug stores, bus lines, and even its own cable television station, based in the favela. Nearly all the buildings, despite being constructed entirely outside the jurisdiction of local authorities, are built with stone and concrete and have running water and basic plumbing, as well as electricity. 

One of the main reasons this slum can be so developed is that it is the center of Rio’s prolific drug trade, since it is located right next to some of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the city, such as Leblon, Gávea, and Ipanema. Although street crime is very low inside the favela due to the iron grip of the drug traffickers, from time to time there are massive gun battles when the police enter for whatever reason. In fact, there is a permanent early-warning system in place should the police even approach the favela. Kids placed at strategic locations light off firecrackers and fireworks when they see the police, and men with walkie-talkies can be seen everywhere. These battles are hardcore. Assault rifles, automatic machine guns, grenades: this isn’t your typical shootout. 

A couple years ago, in retaliation for a police crackdown on trafficants already in jail, several criminal factions launched an all-out war on police that spanned several weeks and multiple cities. There were assassinations of police officers in broad daylight, massacres at restaurants in nice parts of town, and a slew of other actions taken with the goal of sending a message: you don’t mess with these people and expect them to take it lying down.

But besides these relatively rare episodes of violence, life in Rocinha is pretty normal. Most people who live there have respectable jobs in the city, and the place is abuzz with activity and commerce at all hours. Seeing such a place thriving and growing is truly a testament to the resilience of the human spirit.

Rio itself is a bundle of contradictions. You go into the shopping malls and see the most expensive jewelry, and right outside and around the corner is a favela where the average yearly income couldn’t buy the cheapest thing in there. There are neighborhoods where children can walk by themselves at night and people leave their cars and houses unlocked, and other places where you are allowed by law to treat red lights as yield signs because of the danger of assault. The police are renowned for their toughness and efficiency, and yet they often live in the very favelas that are the source of the crime they are fighting, because their salaries are so low and rents so high. In Brazil voting is mandatory, making favelas centers of political power with their huge, tightly packed populations. You think politicians are going to encourage law enforcement to really crack down on an industry that is the foundation of their constituents’ neighborhoods? You think the police officers themselves are going to go head to head with the people who control the neighborhoods they live in, where their families live, where their children go to school? Don’t think so.

And yet it is these conflicts of interest on which Rio de Janeiro is built. They fill the air like music, lending an energy to everything from the intense samba to the graceful capoeira. This vast inequality is a reflection of Brazil itself, and people and ideas from every corner of the country pour into the city as a result, mixing, colliding, and exploding in a cultural pressure-cooker of truly epic proportions. Like all exciting places, there is a certain measure of danger, yet it seems to me that those who learn to walk the fine line between risk and reward find a glorious existence in this city.

Death of iPhone

Dear friends, we are gathered here today to commemorate the life of a noble individual, and to mark his passing with a few words of remembrance. He was drowned on May 25 when a rogue wave washed upon the beach in Rio de Janeiro.

 

iPhone was born in a mysterious, far-away city, in Shanghai, China. He crossed the vast waters of the Pacific tightly packed with his brethren, like the soldiers of D-Day in World War II, and with a similar mission: to liberate the people of a land tortured by the tyranny of its oppressors. In this case, these tyrants were named Motorola, RIM, Nokia, and Palm. Their weapons of death? Unintuitive, clunky interfaces; pixelated, tiny screens; SD cards with only 1 or 2 gigabytes of storage space. The list goes on, as does the long history of pain engendered by these evil little machines.

 

The iPhone, known by his ragtag group of followers as the Jesus Phone, arrived in his newfound home on June 30, 2007 (also known as 1 A.I.), when he was purchased by me, Tiago Forte, at the Apple Store, Fashion Valley. Both our lives would change forever. Although his ministry was short, the Jesus Phone performed many great miracles: he rendered websites clearly and with a usable interface; he turned photos automatically using his built-in accelerometer; he healed the sick (accessing webmd.com), shone light where there was darkness (with the Flashlight application); foretold the weather (courtesy of Yahoo! Weather); and spread the truth of his message everywhere he went: that everyone deserves a phone with controls that make sense, a multi-touch screen, and a beautifully designed exterior.

 

Oh, iPhone, how I will miss you. No longer will the eyes of those I show you to light up with wonder and envy as they realize how crappy their own phones are. No longer will I be automatically cool just by my mere possession of you. No longer will I impress people with your multi-touch gestures, innovative applications, and high-resolution screen. Never again will I be able to distort people´s faces using my fingers, check digg.com while sitting on the toilet, take pictures of random things on the street, or listen to your beautiful music on the bus.

 

But we must move on, and have faith. Faith that the joy iPhone has brought us will never fade. Faith that from this day forward being able to check our email while driving at 90 mph down the freeway is not a luxury, but a necessity. Even now, in the depth of our anguish, there are rumors that the Jesus Phone will soon return. Word comes from the east that he will return in glory, and once again correct all injustices, make all things right. The Scriptures (Apple rumor sites) say that he will be resurrected, he will return to claim his throne atop the kingdom of smart phones (during the Apple Worldwide Developer Conference Keynote Speech on June 9).

 

We must stay strong and continue in the faith. We will surely be tested during this time: many will succumb to temptation and buy Blackberries, the Nokia N95, even a Palm Treo. But when Jesus Phone was here he promised us this: that if we would lift our hands and pray, and keep our eyes on him, and never stray from the one true path, that he would be with us always. Although we suffer not knowing what will happen in the future, we must continue to spread the word. By doing this we store up treasures in Heaven, namely a higher-capacity second-generation iPhone with 3G HSDPA, GPS, a higher-resolution camera, and the ability to take videos.

 

The Means Do Not Justify the Ends, Part 1

I was in the school library today, trying to find my History of Brazil texts in English (I know, for shame). First of all, I have to say that even going to the library at all, apart from looking for a nap spot or using the computers, has been a rare event during my time in college, as anyone who has been to college recently will understand. We simply don’t look for information in books anymore. It’s not only too difficult to find and copy word-for-word into our class papers, but it’s also hopelessly outdated. I’m surprised when I see something in the SDSU library that was written in this millennium. Ok, that’s only 8 years, but still. 

Every time I browse wikipedia, I’m amazed that the article on Vanessa Hudgens was updated 7 minutes ago, which is really frustrating when you’re trying to add the name of her dog which was just revealed like 8 minutes ago in an interview on her personal fan website. Not that I visit her page every day or anything. Or ever. Who’s Vannesa Hudgens?

Aaaaaaanyway, the library. So I navigate the library webportal, looking for the index to find the call numbers for the books I need. The “roller ball” in the mouse was shaped more like a “roller square,” making clicking on the link I wanted feel a little too much like eating those little tomatoes with a fork. This is when I realized a sad fact of libraries in Brazil: you as a student are not allowed to walk the bookshelves yourself. You have to write down the call number and give it to the scarce attendant, who will then get the book for you. A perfectly understandable restriction considering the fact that pages are likely to disappear if access is unmonitored. 

This may not seem like a big deal, but it hit me hard: what does this say about the spirit of intellectual discovery for this nation’s youth? I remembered my days in the Laguna Niguel Public Library, wandering through the aisles for hours, wondering if I could ever digest even the most infintesimal fraction of just the books I saw before me (yes, I was different). How many great ideas of the past came about because someone, so to speak, “wandered the bookshelves of the library”? What great idea, what breakthrough solution, would never come about if knowledge was not free to collide, mix and mingle not only on the shelves, but in our heads? 

Just as my sense of American superiority was reaching full force, I question popped into my head: what is the alternative? I thought of the SDSU library, its empty aisles echoing with the sounds of cellphones and ipods and not much else. The books collecting dust, the microfiche slowly detiorating. I realized that we who have endless amounts of information from every conceivable source, do not appreciate it in the slightest. We spend our time instead on YouTube and Comedy Central, avoiding to the best of our ability anything resembling substance. Is this really the society that I want to promote and imitate? 

I think of this often: what is the end goal? We are programmed to automatically think that anything with the word “development” in it is good. Economic development is good. Workforce development is good. Infrastructure development is good. Paving roads is good because it will enable cheaper transportation of goods. Privatizing utility companies is good because it will lead to increased competition and productivity. Teaching children English is good because it will increase their value in the workplace. But we never stop for a moment and think, what are we trying to accomplish here?

I would argue that you cannot come up with a better example of a living and breathing model for development than Orange County, CA. It is a land of the best doctors and hospitals, the best schools at all levels, the best parks and beaches, the highest level of communications and transportation infrastructure the world has ever known. There is widespread gender and racial equality, huge opportunities for immigrants and minorities in both the economic and political spheres. But is this what we want? What I want, at least? No.

I do not want a world where your physical appearance is widely accepted as the most reliable method of judging the content of your character. I do not want a world where every source of danger and injury is bubble-wrapped, insured, waiver-signed, and red-flagged. I do not want a world where intellectualism is considered snobbery and ignorance is cool. I do not want a world where money is both the ultimate end and the only means. I do not want a world where true community is old-fashioned and isolation is the height of status. I do not want a world obsessed with ever more elaborate ways to fight off the numbness of living separated from your heart, your mind, and most importantly your soul. in fact I will fight this reality until my last breath.

But I refuse to take the opposite extreme, to do what so many writers, philosophers, and poets have done before me. I will not romanticize poverty, cultivate the ideal of the “noble savage” as some sort of pure and unpolluted and innocent human. I have seen what poverty does, and there is nothing romantic about it. It brings profound ignorance about the very basics of the world. It brings senseless violence, from the streets into the bedroom. It brings drugs and alcohol that attack the human spirit on a deeply spiritual level, leaving physical desolation as collateral damage. It brings injustice and tragedy. It takes the last 500 years of lessons we’ve learned as a civilization and puts them just out of reach, in the library that they pass on the bus every day on their way to work. No, poverty is not the answer either.

So what are we left with? Poverty is damning and development is also damning. I feel like in the midst of all this abstract theorizing, I have to go back to the basics, think in terms that I can understand as an earthling on the ground. I have to find someone who has found the results I want, and see if those results can be replicated on a societal level.

I’m reminded of a quote by E.M. Forster, in his book Two Cheers for Democracy:

“I believe in aristocracy, though - if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages; and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.

“...an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate, and the plucky.” That is what we need.

To be continued...

Top 10 Ways You Know You're a Gringo in Brazil

1. You only look one way when crossing one-way streets.

2. Everywhere you go you spontaneously think of ways people could be sued.

3. You think an “x-salad” is a food that used to be a salad.

4. You wear a seatbelt. Ever.

5. You take it as a personal offense when there is no

 toilet paper, hand soap, or paper towels.

6. You believe there exists a situation in life in which it would

 be inappropriate to wear your team’s soccer jersey.

7. You ask for directions based on street names, instead of commonplace and easily misidentifiable landmarks.

8. You think pedestrian right-of-way is a funda

mental human right.

9. You will not drink anything whose temperature is not pushing the limits of absolute zero.

10. You have ever smacked into a door that said “Puxe.”

Non sequitor illustrated:

this is the math department’s unique way of discouraging people from visiting their office hours.

“In other news, 4 students and 2 professors went missing today after they got lost in the infinite expanse between floors 7 and 9. University math and physics professors are being held as possible suspects.”

Backwash: it’s when the wave breaks on the sand, and then washes back toward the ocean, right? Please tell me that’s what it is. Please?

Two for one special on Wednesdays: pay full price for your belly hair and we’ll shave your back hair too!

don’t laugh: you have NOT seen the doozies that hostelers are capable of. The illustration is 1:1000 scale

someone, somewhere couldn’t think of any better way to dispose of huge amounts of excrement than to burn it. This makes our “burning dog poo on the doorstep” prank look just silly

NOTICE TO PASSENGERS: In order to increase our efficiency and better serve you, we will no longer be actually stopping at bus stops, or closing the doors. Please remember to roll when you hit the ground.

the little known downfall of every revolutionary movement: grammatical errors (it should be “poder popular”)

this is what you get when you buy toilet paper at Costco

Baile do Trabalhador: who needs Worker’s Parties when you have parties for workers?

this logo for the Brazilian army clearly breaks rule #5,623 of warfare: “Do not under any circumstances allow Walt Disney to design your military logo if you want any chance of intimidating the enemy”

definitive proof that wherever a Brazilian goes in the world, he will inevitably establish a “Cantina Brasil” there (this is in an encampment during WWII)

when subtlety just can’t get the job done