Comments by perguntador

thanks, @panzerbjorne.

In the end, this Chinese characters guy, just as his AntiBr clone, has a self-imposed mission: he cannot let pass the slightest hint of something vaguely positive about Brazil in The Economist.

He must then educate TE's readers by way of lengthy rants about all Brazil's real or imagined failings. Or else people could think Brazil is much better than it deserves to and can ever be.

A weird obsession, really. He has to pursue it even when the trigger is no more than a simple figure showing that millions of people shuttle by air between the two biggest Brazilian cities — as should be expected in a huge country of 200 million with no passenger rail service.

"Cada louco com sua mania", grandmas used to say down here (to each nutcase its own mania).

I could never finish Patrick O'Brian's novels in English.

I got lost in the battle scenes with the English nautical jargon and maneuvers. Anything beyond "port/starboard" and "windward/downwind" had me looking for the dictionary— although I have sailed myself when young and still have a grasp of the basic vocabulary, but only in Portuguese.

It was quite annoying, When read in translation, though, they were a treat.

You do not need to change languages to see this kind of behavior. It happens even with accents of the same language.

Brazilian Portuguese has many strong regional accents. They all meet (and mingle) in Brasilia, the very young capital (a little over 50 years old), where much of the population comes from other regions.

It is common that their accents get "softened" after a few years in Brasília, and they begin to use other people's regionalisms and expressions. It seems people search — without even thinking about it — for a bland middle ground that does not grate on anybody's ears.

But you can always tell when they are talking on the phone with someone back home: they usually revert to the strong, undiluted version of their accent, with the voice tone and expressions to match.

add Middle Eastern-German-Japanese to the mix and you'll have a more complete picture (and don't forget the Portuguese themselves).

I don't know if we may call the Portuguese hispanics, unless you want to go back to the Roman Empire. Both Spaniards and Portuguese are certainly Iberians, though.

A cavalier attitude to the rules, indeed.

The more we get to know about financial markets, the more we are left with the impression that compliance officers, risk analysts — in fact, anyone whose job is to make these people follow the rules and do not take too much risk — play the exact role of the nun in the whorehouse.

@publius50 says: "I wonder what it would be like to become a foreigner".

He won't become a foreigner. Being Brazilian by birth, he will only revert to being a foreigner in the US.

That's a decision he's entitled to make just as becoming a US citizen has been. And provided he follows the rules and pays his dues, that's it.

Let's say he had lived all this time as a foreign resident, not becoming a US citizen. Would that have made any difference in terms of his ability to create wealth in the US? Or is his tax situation? (I'm asking, please - I don't know for certain).

But it seems obvious that all this fuss about his leaving the US would be void and null had he never become a citizen in the first place, and then given up the citizenship.

Yet, if the answer to the question above is no, he could have invested his money and his talents in Facebook just the same. He would be just one more bright foreigner creating bright things and making money in the US - something that is obviously good for the US and the foreigner

(btw, there's another Brazilian Internet entrepreneur in this situation in the US: Michel Krieger, the co-founder of Instagram, which has just been bought by Facebook - he was a Stanford graduate, and as far as I know, did not become a US citizen).

All this excited talk of ungratitude and patriotism seems quite overheated. It only shows how any political discussion in the US is quickly swamped by a wave of partisan half-truths and emotional appeals to people's fears and prejudices.

Brazil is not "US of...". It was some time ago, but not anymore. The complete name is Federative Republic of Brazil (República Federativa do Brasil in Portuguese).

Fine, @Robert Hill. The tecnical detail made me think that a fundamental split between the materials and the sport itself has been developing for some time and reaches now a breaking point (pardon the pun).

It seems that over-canvased, massively tensioned, strong but brittle things that snap before bending are very poor boats, after all. Amazingly fast, sure, but lousy in every other aspect.

They're not real creatures of the sea, so to say. "Animals" not suited to their ecosystem. So, it is time for them to go extinct.

Boat designers could try other lines of evolution that better balance speed and adaptability to real sea conditions. What that would be, and how it could be attained, I leave to the experts.

But I would love to see these new sea creatures racing across the Atlantic and, in a sunny morning, sailing past the fortresses at the mouth of Guanabara Bay, in Rio de Janeiro.

This is a chart about city pairings (or airport pairings, as @thebignils notices). It is not about total traveller's numbers of single cities, or their overall wealth.

So, why would this chart make S. Paulo look as rich as Dubai or Zurich? It would take an exceptionally uninformed observer to make this leap.

And there is nothing "disproportional" in the airline traffic between Rio and S. Paulo. Taken together the two metropolitan areas house more than 30 million people. It is the population of whole countries.

The two cities are number #1 and #2 business, manufacturing and research centers in Brazil (Rio has been through rough times, but seeing the city as just a tourist magnet really does not justice to it). As Brazil grows and its wealth becomes better shared, this traffic will surely grow even bigger.

btw, Azul has very little to do with Jet Blue beyond its name and founder and CEO David Neeleman (who left Jet Blue quite some time ago).

Sailboats are the most beautiful and clever mobile machines man has designed. They do not carry their own souce of energy with them, and I guess their beauty has a lot to do with this simple fact.

It makes sailing a lot different from Formula One. Next to any racing boat, F1 racecars are no more than four-wheeled stinkpots trying to get as aerodynamic as they can. Brute force vs. cleverness.

Sailboats have to tap some of the energy nature provides. Their crews have to negotiate all the time the best compromise between the winds, the sea (currents, etc...) and the limits imposed by the boat's strength and design.

So I tend to agree with @wobytides: if they break, then they're not well-designed relative to the sea conditions and racing demands they must withstand. Or else their crews are pushing them too hard. Maybe more strict rules are not the best way to solve this.

In principle, a crew which realizes that could simply go a bit slower in order to reduce the strain on their boat and watch all the others break down as it sails to victory. It is a bet and could backfire, of course. But then, isn't every decision in boat racing a risky bet?

I'd leave God out of this. Too much trouble for the Old Guy. We all know the best way to solve any dispute between Brazilians and Argentines is a football match.

(and yes, everybody knows Pelé still is the best player ever, despite Maradona's challenge and young Messi's best efforts).

I believe we're all bored to death by inane soap operas. Let's have some soup opera for a change.

The curvy model in the tight dress must have made it even more lucha-libre-like than what this blog post has portrayed.

All in all, it seems one more case of a debate spoiled by rules which try too hard to keep it civil and "elevated". That's OK, but you need a few stabs at the jugular to make a political debate memorable.

"They point out that, in some respects, Hispanics seem natural conservatives: religious, hard-working and with close family ties".

That's wishful thinking at its worst — bred by ignorance and prejudice.

What you call "Hispanics" is the population of whole countries, as varied and plural as the US population. Their match of political and cultural features does not follow thwe same rules as in the US. It is a different jigsaw.

For instance, close family ties are a common feature of all Latin American people, of every political persuasion — conservatives, liberals, and all the shades between and beyond them.

For Latin American men or women of the left — or liberals, in US politcal jargon — it would sound baffling (or laughable) to hear that, because of their family ties, they are expected to be conservatives.

The same with religion — being a religious person in Latin America does not make you a conservative by default. Ask the many priests — Roman Catholic or from reformed churches — that work to empower the poor.

And hardworking! — well, in any sane political culture it should hardly be an ideological statement. That a "hardworking" immigrant must also be expected to be a "conservative" only shows how sadly prejudiced and distorted has become the political debate in the US.

Sorry I didn't find your reply earlier. A very late comment, then...

You really miss the point you have raised yourself with the question about the "special relationship".

The point is not Brazil vs. Scotland. The point is how the US deals with friends and allies that show even a small degree of autonomy and independent policy-making.

Quite badly, I'd say, as even the British complain sometimes - no matter their cherished "special relationship".

And yes, Scotland gave us Adam Smith, but so what? England gave us J.M. Keynes, and look at mr. Cameron, the Middle Age physician - bleeding his patient in the hope he will get healthy before he dies of the treatment.

well, extreme cold leads people to consume lots of alcohol, or are the good people of Maine teetotalers?

The Esteves guy is one of a kind, really. First he took control of Pactual by rudely ejecting its founder, the man who had given him a job, taught him to be a maverick dealer and made him climb up the ranks.

Then he sold Pactual to UBS and kept working there. Next thing was some rumour that he had engineered a boardroom coup to take UBS from the Swiss themselves, but failed.

Eventually, he bought back Pactual from UBS by less than he had been paid before and renamed it BTG Pactual.

Here's a guy who, in a way, successfully shorted his own bank.

I clicked the small square at the right upper corner of the box and it just disappeared.

I hope I haven't triggered a chain of social network events that will eventually lead to the posting of family photos in 70's attire all over Facebook.

Sorry for not replying sooner, @ashbird.

I don´t know which is the norm for official writing in Brazil - as I have never written anything official in my life.

But I guess people would choose any one among the norms available in day-to-day non-official life, and then mix them all to create two or three hybrid systems more.

That´s how Brazil works. We´re a very unorthodox, not-for-purists country, as economists, priests, and grammarians know very well.

@jouris, you can also be counteractive.

In fact, that's what you are proposing: a counteractive approach to the ugly proliferation of "proactive". I actively support it.