Anxieties of Influence | Some Key Brazilian Bloggers

As a wannabe beat reporter trying to get oriented in a strange land, my raison du blog is to identify influential media strategists and strategies and reverse engineer their techniques and implementations. In some cases, the structure of hyperlinks in a galaxy of related content provides evidence of a Collaborative Networked Organization (CNO) in action, [...]

Virada Cultural Paulista | The Second Life Effect

Why we avoided the Sambodian Virada Cultural Paulista | 2012, or, traduttores traditores. Neuza and I have not been consuming our fair share of Sambodian culture lately, owing both to ennui and to the odd work schedule of a traduttore traditore. We are also somewhat puzzled over the latest pet project supported by federal and state [...]

The Fearless Independence of the Editora Abril and Other Tall Tales of Its Kind

Blog da Cidadania‘s Edu Guimarães is a leading figure in the self-styled «progessive blogsphere» here in Brazil.  He writes, Some days ago, a friend of mine employed by the Editora Abril phoned me to describe his worries over the scandal involving the newsweekly Veja — that is to say, involving the possibility that group publisher Roberto [...]

TV PSDB? | The Padre Anchieta PPP

They might be better off I think. The way it seems to me Making up their own shows, Which might be better than TV … –Talking Heads Recent developments at São Paulo’s PBS quasi-equivalent, TV Cultura, continues to draw flack from the Ford Foundation-funded Observatório da Imprensa and other local observers. As Wikipedia notes, and I [...]

Currency Wars | Welcome to the Desert of the Real

O Brasil acorda para a guerra cambial | Brasilianas.Org. The daily column of Luis Nassif, the notable Brazilian business and economics «spreadsheet head». Last Friday, March 9, 2012, will be regarded by posterity as the day Brazil officially awakened to the currency wars, which for so long have eaten away at the fabric of Brazilian [...]

Vulture Culture | An Impromptu Link Sociology

Item: SEC Launches Inquiry Aimed at Private Equity. Federal regulators have launched a wide-ranging inquiry into the private-equity industry that examines how firms value their investments, among other matters. The Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division sent letters to private-equity firms of various sizes in early December as part of an “informal inquiry,” according to the [...]

Endowment Fever | Crimson Tide on the Rio Pinheiros

The Folha de S. Paulo reports: The University of São Paulo plans to imitate Harvard, establishing a private endowment to be filled up by alumni and, one suspects, principally, corporate sponsors, and then magically quintupled by ronin financial rocket scientists from Connecticut. What is odd in this puff piece, however, is that while Harvard has been a [...]

Copersucar Ready to IPO

Copersucar’s booze-fueled Formula 1 model. I told them so, but they only wanted to pay me $0.05 a word for the wisdom so I blew them off. One of the largest ethanol and sugar exporters in the world, Brazil’s Copersucar has filed with the Brazilian SEC-equiivalent to go public and sell shares on the Bovespa [...]

Marina and the Greens | Plus, Big Sousaphone Solo

Newsvine | A Fair and Balanced Interview with Marina Silva by Globo. Mirabile Dictu.. That is me doing a quick bit of translation about the collision between politics and environmental policy in Brazil. Brazil has only had a forest service for 10 years, to our 110. The obscenely well-organized agribusiness lobby is more interested in [...]

Brazilian Capital Market Machine | Writing the Meltdown Manual

The great Sambodian smoking hole, above: Collapse of excavations at the future Pinheiros Station of the São Paulo Metrõ system. After all these years, and thank you for your concern, Brazil seems to have adequate control over its nuclear reactors — even if the location Angra dos Reis along the south-cenral coast, teeming with life, [...]