Ford's mass production ideas had a great impact in the ways we produce things. Starting from car manufacturing, his production line model became a paradigm of the 20th century, and it will certainly be for the next coming centuries.
already time for Windows and Office Software become public, for the benefit of our civilization?
optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."
on had such a deterring effect on me that, after I had passed the final examination, I found the consideration of any scientific problems distasteful to me for an entire year."
in it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge."
Things Americana reflect the cultural icons created by the American Dream, a dream that peaked during the 50’s. Since the end of the Depression years, American entrepreneurs understood that it is better to profit 5 cents from millions of customers than to earn 100 bucks from a single client. Making things popular and cheaper was the tune of the day, differing from the European market that preferred to sell expensively to consumers.
Take the Hershey’s chocolate bar for instance. With a nickel, every worker in the United States could afford a bar of chocolate, not affordable before industrialization and mass production. The same goes to Coca-Cola, Ford’s cars, white goods, TV sets, record players and other industrialized, mass produced items that became part of the American Iconography.
Brief and to the Point would like to present the culture created around the mass production saga that shaped so much American lives. Americana icons are not only exclusive to the US, but they became part of millions of people around the globe. The column Americana will explore this subject, starting today with the Coca-Cola ads of yesteryears.
Enjoy!
0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9? Well the ancient Romans had hard times calculating with their numerals. Try adding MMCCCXDV plus MCLDXII. Now try adding the same value in Western numerals: 2345 + 1462. The answer is 3807. A calculation very easily done in modern times, it took an 
ancient form of abacus to perform the addition in Roman times. But in Europe, these Roman numerals were present until around 1200’s C.E.What we call Western numerals today, is also called Arabic numerals, Hindu-Arabic Numerals or more precisely and correctly, Hindu Numerals. Yes you bet, they come all the way from India. The Indian numeral system was considered to better because it had a number other numeral systems of that time did not have: The Zero (0).
Although the Mayans had already a Zero in their numerals around 4 B.C.E, the Indians developed the use of their philosophical concept of void as Zero, circa 5 C.E., affecting cultures all around the Euro-Asian Continent, and the present-day financial system would not have existed if it were not for the Hindi concept of Void or Sunyata. According to 
Buddhism, the world is Void of definite singular identities. Instead, the world is an inter-dependent and mutually dependent reality.
With the invention of the Zero as a number and not as concept, huge astronomical sums now became possible, and calculating fractions became as easy as dealing with whole numbers alone. The easiness and practicability of the Hindu numerals spread across Asia like fire, until it reached Baghdad, an important ancient cultural and centre of trade.
The Arabs had a reason to adopt the Hindu numerals. The Islamic law stipulates that inheritances be divided, according to the number of wives relative to the number of sons and daughters. This surmounted to a high amount of fractional numbers to calculate. The Zero-possessing Hindu numerals were most fit for that.
In early 13th century, Leonardo Fibonacci publishes Liber Abaci (Book of Calculation). Fibonacci grew in present-day Algeria, where his father, Guglielmo Bonaccio ran a trading post. There, Fibonacci got in contact with the Hindu numerals, but by that time, known as the Arabic numerals.
Fibonacci’s book of calculation presented the Arabic numerals to European merchants, in order to help them calculate huge numbers and fraction without using an abacus. The Arabic numerals were then adopted by the currency exchange tables (banca, banks) widely spread in the Italian cities, because each city had a money system. But because people could not understand the Arabic numerals, they became suspicious about the transactions made by the tables and they would call the authorities to “ruptus” (break in Latim) the table (bank + rupta = bankrupt), literally breaking the tables where the currencies were exchanged.
Banned by authorities, the Arabic numerals did not fare well until 1300’s, when the Pope allowed merchants to charge interest rates. Because of the easiness of counting fractions generated by the percentage of the interests, the private Italian lenders, started to ostensibly use the Arabic numerals. This led to the foundation of the first Commercial Banks in history.
That is when the Arabic numerals start to slowly replace the abacus dependent Roman numerals across Europe.
Brief and to the Point:
Out of something that is worth nothing (Zero), we got a numeral system that represents everything on the planet and far beyond. We wouldn’t have financial markets today and neither have made technological progress without the invention of Zero. How about computers then, that runs on Ones and Zeroes?
Do we owe the Arabs? Yes, we do. But the Arabs owe the Hindus. Everyone owes something to someone. There are no stand-alone cultures. We all live in an inter-dependent and inter-related world. It is null to think that there are individual existences. But this nullity gave rise to the much respected ZERO!!
Well the Democrat Presidential race is taking vicious turns. A site in the Internet published a 2006 photo of Barack Hussein Obama Jr. in African dress and garbs, implying that somehow Obama has Muslim background.
The Academy Award received by Frances McDormand for best actress back in 1996 for the movie Fargo, the Coen’s sixth production, was probably the first step towards a greater recognition from Hollywood. Having received eight nominations for their movie “No Country for Old Men” may be Hollywood’s redemption in regards to the Coen brothers’ body of work.
The Coen brothers’ filmography follows below:
• Blood Simple (1984)
• Raising Arizona (1987)
• Miller's Crossing (1990)
• Barton Fink (1991)
• The Hudsucker Proxy (1994)
• Fargo (1996)
• The Big Lebowski (1998)
• O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000)
• The Man Who Wasn't There (2001)
• Intolerable Cruelty (2003)
• The Ladykillers (2004)
• No Country for Old Men (2007)
• Burn After Reading (2008)[9]
• The Yiddish Policemen's Union (pre-production)
• A Serious Man (pre-production)
• Hail Caesar (TBA)
Source: www.imdb.com
Brief and to the Point:
We, from “Brief and to the Point” have got our fingers crossed for the Coens possible biggest moment!
Check the trailer for "No Country for Old Men" and a Clip that pays tribute to the Coen's body of work!
Much is still to be discovered by the Western countries in regards to India's Beauty Queens from Bollywood. The faster India grows economically wise, the faster its movie industry becomes even more elaborated.
Higher budgets availability seems to ensure the country's production of incomparable Beauty Queens in Bollywood.
We, from Brief and to the Point, are major fans of Bollywood's true Queens of Beauty and Sensuality.
That is one of one the reasons we have decided to produce our own videos in order to show our appreciation both to Bollywood's actresses and the quality of the movies they are in.
Brief and to the Point:
A woman's beauty is to be idolized!
Check our videos below and thanks for visiting us!
acclaimed “Tropa de Elite” (Elite Squad) movie by director José Padilha, which got its upmost peak of fame abroad upon receiving an internationally renowned award, Berlin Festival Golden Bear. In reality, what does not seem clear to international audience lies on the fact that the awarded movie is a piece of propaganda when it comes to conveying the idea
that Rio de Janeiro’s police force is focused on “trying” to be honest and incorruptible.
There cannot be honesty when money talks. And money talks
big time when Rio de Janeiro’s police gets full awareness of the fact that drug money wills and deals big time at the Favelas located in that city, which openly corrupts its police force as the local media attests everyday.
The corruption that happens in Rio de Janeiro as well as other major cities in Brazil is a widely known fact to most upper-middle class in the country, which chooses to ignore its existence.
Drug is an income source in a country where most African descendents are harmed by a silent Apartheid. It is a social problem that most likely should be healed with jobs and education. But the Brazilian elite would rather suppress the problem, rather than solving it through income distribution.
It is not only full-grown man involved in the drug traffic. Small children are allured to criminality. The children accept because of the money they can make, but unfortunately, some are threatened with death, if they do not work for the organized crime. The organized crime has deep roots in the favelas' families. It is not a “police gets bandit” case anymore, people non-committed to the crime (women and children as well) are compulsorily drawn to the traffic because the drug barons reign inside the Favelas.
The BOPE elite squad shown in the film makes use of outright violence and sophisticated torture methods. The message therein is that as the squad is composed of the good guys, this type of violence, in disregard of human rights, is to be appraised and condoned. In fact, human rights are a concept which is regarded as an obstruction to law enforcement by the social elite in Brazil. The usual discourse of such elite, is that a “good bandit, is a dead bandit”, or that “human rights exists only for bandits” and not for the taxpayers.
It is a wide belief among the extreme right in Brazil that if they could they would remove poverty by removing the poor. As the upper-middle class is increasingly cornered by the violence ushered by the drug traffickers, there are more and more people becoming sympathizers of the extermination of the poor so that they can drive their luxurious cars in style along their fancy Boulevards. That would be a quick and effective way to make that dream come true.
Many are conniving to the extermination of the poor, but none dares to say it openly for they fear organized crime might retaliate.
In a media-oligarchy ruled country, the view exposed in “Tropa de Elite” (60% of the film casting was supplied by Globo TV Network), will most likely to become the prevalent view about the issue in the country. On one side, there lies the upper-middle class luxury-minded culture (a culture which was vastly spread by Globo Network), and on the other, the world of the un-possessed and unemployed people in Favelas, that live on a culture of violence, crime, homicide and alike to feed their self-esteem.
By not being able to reach the ideal luxury world portrayed by the Globo Network soap-operas by means of employment and social integration, the lower strata is up to get what they want, by the use of force.
Brief and to the Point:
If Brazil spent years years looking for its National Hero, a truculent Capitão Nascimento has just been elected the Middle Upper Class Hero, the true Saviour of the World in flesh and blood, the one who catters for the well-off "Tired Ones" (Cansados).
