Happy new year! Feliz ano novo!

Hi. Olá.

In this comming year: enjoy the company of your family. Cherish the gift of having friends. Take care of the environment. Give less importance to material possessions. Enjoy your freedom and well-being.

Fell good as much as you can. Be happy most of the time. Achieve your healthy stress levels.

And remember. This is your life, and it ends one minute at the time. Live to the fullest now! Do not wait for rewards that are promised to come later. Be thankful for what you have this moment and try your best to make that feeling spread.

Have a great 2007. May this be an extraordinary year.


Neste ano que agora entra: aprecia a companhia da família. Dá valor aos seus amigos. Toma cuidado com a Natureza. Dá menos importância aos bens materiais. Goza a tua liberdade e o teu bem-estar.

Sente-te bem sempre que puderes. Sê feliz o tempo todo. Atinge os teus níveis de stress optimais.

E lembra-te. Esta é a tua vida e termina a cada minuto que passa. Vive com intensidade agora! Não estejas à espera de recompensas prometidas para mais tarde. Se feliz pelo que tens neste momento, e espalha esse sentimento.

Um excelente 2007. Que este seja um ano extraordinário.

must read

The Church of the Non-Believers

A band of intellectual brothers is mounting a crusade against belief in God. Are they winning converts, or merely preaching to the choir?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.11/atheism.html

impact thinking

An interview with Richard Dawkins: Evolutionary biologist that explains why God is a delusion and religion is a virus.

Does religion contribute to the violence of Islamic extremists? Christian extremists?

Of course it does. From the cradle, they are brought up to revere martyrs and to believe they have a fast track to heaven. With their mother's milk they imbibe hatred of heretics, apostates and followers of rival faiths.

I don't wish to suggest it is doctrinal disputes that are motivating the individual soldiers who are doing the killing. What I do suggest is that in places like Northern Ireland, religion was the only available label by which people could indulge in the human weakness for us-or-them wars.

What is going on is more like a vendetta. It was one of their lot's grandfathers who killed one of our lot's grandfathers, and so we're getting our revenge. The "their lot" and "our lot" is only defined by religion. In other parts of the world it might be defined by color, or by language, but in so many parts of the world it isn't, it's defined by religion. That's true of the conflicts among Croats and the Serbs and Bosnians -- that's all about religion as labels.

The grotesque massacres in India at the time of partition were between Hindus and Muslims. There was nothing else to distinguish them, they were racially the same. They only identified themselves as "us" and the others as "them" by the fact that some of them were Hindus and some of them were Muslims.

How would we be better off without religion?

We'd all be freed to concentrate on the only life we are ever going to have. We'd be free to exult in the privilege -- the remarkable good fortune -- that each one of us enjoys through having been being born. An astronomically overwhelming majority of the people who could be born never will be. You are one of the tiny minority whose number came up.

Be thankful that you have a life, and forsake your vain and presumptuous desire for a second one. The world would be a better place if we all had this positive attitude to life. It would also be a better place if morality was all about doing good to others and refraining from hurting them.

More on: http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2005/04/30/dawkins/index.html