O que é este blog?

Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.

quarta-feira, 9 de julho de 2014

Ironias da vida: autor de um guia de sobrevivencia aos touros de Pamplona foi chifrado por um touro de Pamplona...

São dessas coisas que acontecem, algo como se o autor de um livro sobre como ficar rico facilmente, consegue ir à falência em menos de três investimentos...
Esta entra na categoria das histórias deliciosas... sobre as desgraças alheias...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Author of “How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona” gets gored by bull at Pamplona — but is it irony?

  
The Washington Post, July 9 at 1:31 PM  
By now you must have heard the news.
Bill Hillmann — yes, the man who helped write “Fiesta: How to Survive the Bulls of Pamplona” — just got gored by a bull at Pamplona.
So, how good a guide was it? It was an eBook that went on for pages and pages, when a simple “Don’t run with the bulls at Pamplona” would have sufficed. Ernest Hemingway’s grandson also contributed to the book. AsGawker notes, “Hemingway is the grandson of Ernest ‘Big Papa’ Hemingway, whose book The Sun Also Rises popularized the old-world ritual among adrenalin-addicted manly English-speakers.”
I have taken the liberty of making some edits to the book.
Where they write, “I asked his grandson, John Hemingway, about this [Ernest Hemingway's own 'goring'] and got the following pithy response: Well excuse the pun, but I think there was a lot of bull in my grandfather’s dispatches to Toronto in the ’20s.” I have left it intact. That part is great.
I have gone through the rest of the book with a red pen and replaced most of the advice with a simple series of steps.
1. So, you want to run with the bulls in Pamplona, do you? Like “Papa” did? Great! It is good to have hopes and dreams and bucket-list items. Bucket-list items are most useful when you are really sick or in danger. They give you something to think about and live for. “No,” you say, clinging tighter to the edge of that ledge, “I can’t let go now. I haven’t run with the bulls at Pamplona yet. It has always been my dream to run with the bulls at Pamplona.” The only danger is that if you make it back onto the ledge, you might actually go out and put this dream into practice. That is no good! If you do it, you will have nothing left to live for. And you will inevitably be disappointed and surrounded by people who smell, as one of the book’s author’s puts it, “of urine, alcohol, and vomit. . . . The one thing they do not stink of is fear. Fear itself has no smell, despite what the novelists say.” Sure. Besides, you might get hurt. The point is: Cherish this dream from the comfort of your home.

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