Rough guide to Brazilian political parties

There are 27 political parties registered for the elections in Brazil next Sunday. Their names can be placed in the political spectrum, roughly from left to right, as follows:

5 communist parties: PCdoB, PSTU, PCB, PCO, PSOL;
6 labor parties: PTB*, PDT*, PT*, PTdoB, PRTB, PTN;
2 socialist parties: PSB, PPS;
1 social democratic party: PSDB*;
1 green party: PV;
6 generic label parties (democratic, progressive, or republican): PMDB*, DEM*, PRP, PP, PRB, PR;
3 christian parties: PTC, PSC, PSDC;
3 others: PMN, PHS, PSL.

Notes and disclaimers:
- The ideological affiliations of the communists are as follows: PCdoB - Maoist-Stalinist (Albanian line); PSTU - Leninist; PCB - Soviet Brezhnevite (refounded); PCO - Trotskyite; PSOL - Cuban Line (in transition to Chávez-led).
-Each of the left wing parties would probably reject the credentials of the others as properly communist, or socialist, or laborite. Nor would they agree on who is a dissidence of whom.
-Additionally PPS is the former Communist Party (anti-Stalinist), now undistinguishable from fellow eurostyle social-democrat PSDB.
-There are no explicitly conservative parties, although DEM and PP come closest. However there is a smattering of right-wingnuts or extreme nationalists in most if not all of them. There are no open liberals (in the European sense) in Brazilian politics.
-The christian parties all have additional specs such as social or labor but to the best of my knowledge tend to be neither.
-Each of the six parties marked with a star* usually controls 5% or more of the seats in at least one chamber of congress, and are therefore more costly for wholesale purchase, although the fact that neither PDT, nor PTB, nor PMDB have any identifiable ideology makes them affordable at retail.
-The smaller parties are more malleable and can be persuaded to support pretty much any campaign. The exceptions are the communist parties, populated by students and public employees, thus directly funded by the taxpayers.

For more information, consult the electoral tribunal's site.

Is the Schrödinger equation contingent or tautological?

I have been wondering whether Schrödinger partial differential equation of quantum mechanics can be used to model the uncertainty in a dynamical system, say a control system or some estimation process. So the question is whether following the equation is a special property of a particle, or a general model of uncertainty increasing over time.

Now of course the fact that an electron obeys the Schrödinger equation does say some about its nature - it is a falsifiable statement which happens never to have been falsified. But perhaps the left hand side of the equation can be considered, roughly speaking, as a truism: "look, if an object has a probability distribution that spreads ou over time, this is how it should be described." The only physical statement would be that the description applies to an electron, or another particle, not in the equation itself.

The question has nothing to do with whether some philosophical version of quantum mechanics such as the Copenhagen interpretation is correct. It is a pragmatic question: can I use wave functions to represent uncertainty in a practical application? If so, how? An example would settle that the methods of quantum physics can be used as a general purpose tool, not that they have any special physical meaning. The main reason to doubt that the method would work is that the probability distribution obtained as the magnitude squared of the equation's solution has a wavelike character, which is probably not shared by an arbitrary control system.

Mensalão do Nassif

O Nassif publicou uma resposta ao artigo do Estadão que noticia o salário de 30 milréis que ele recebe do governo federal para dar as opiniões dele. A resposta se prende às filigranas licitatórias e diárioficialescas, e não responde o ponto principal, que é o fato de ele receber um salário mensal para expressar suas opiniões. Então resolvi perguntar se ele não acha que receber dinheiro do governo compromete a imparcialidade. O texto do comentário que postei no blog está abaixo, se vocês quiserem conferir, caso não seja publicado.

Nassif,

O fato é que você está recebendo um salário mensal para dar sua opinião. Será que o leitor que acha que isso compromete sua imparcialidade está errado? Afinal, você mesmo dá pouco crédito às opiniões de determinados comentaristas econômicos com o argumento que eles trabalham em banco, e portanto para você são suspeitos de parcialidade.

Como lidar com alunos desmotivados?

Um curso da Usp sofre com a falta de motivação dos estudantes. Entre os procedimentos para resolver este problema indicados abaixo, é considerado aceitável que o corpo docente siga todos, EXCETO UM. Assinalar a exceção.
a) Parar de oferecer o curso, para ensinar novos assuntos de maior interesse.
b) Obter um cargo de chefia para o professor responsável, com o objetivo de mudar a composição política dos órgãos decisórios.
c) Criar uma nova disciplina obrigatória tendo o curso problemático como pré-requisito, de forma a aumentar a importância do assunto na formação do aluno.
d) Estabelecer um programa de pós-graduação para formar quadros aptos a ensinarem exatamente a mesma matéria, gerando empregos de docentes na área.
e) Controlar rigorosamente a presença e aplicar provas dificílimas, aumentando a repetência.

For everything there is a season

Last week's flowers are scattered on the ground.

Ipê branco florido

O ipê branco na praça do relógio da USP, em frente à reitoria velha, está florido. O fenômeno dura poucos dias. Gam zeh ya'avor.

Passarinho

Um passarinho entrou em casa.
Ficou preso, batendo contra a porta de vidro.
Saí fora e mostrei minha cara feia.
Ele fugiu pela outra janela.