Brazil is right now facing an important moment in its development. Until last decade the country lived suffocated by the “dragon of hyper-inflation”. Nowdays the level of debate about economy and politics is much more mature then in the 1980s and early 1990s. (Tough I’m hardly capable to judging this, being only a child back then!). Debating about Brazilian problems is becoming more realistic and exciting each day.

Nowdays we are facing a number of small crisis in long-term problems. We are finding out a lot of infra-structure deficiencies, and discovering how a problem in one economic activity can be prejudicial to others, causing subtle chain reactions of negative effect. It’s like the Brazilian giant was tied to the ground with numerous small ropes when he was asleep.

Education is, of course, the worst of the long-term structural problems, and probably the key to solve them all for good. And we are talking about scientific research here too.

Research in Brazil is mostly restricted to universities, specially public ones, that are the most important here. One peculiar characteristic of Brazil is that the students at public higher education schools came mostly from higher-class private high-schools. This is something we’ve been fighting hard to change recently.

There is a lot of debate going on here about what is the best way to finance education and students. Since the 1990s government has been creating different welfare programs, and they are in constant reforming, receiving all kinds of critics.

Our current president, Lula da Silva, likes to make controversial claims that I like to scrutinise. I like him, but he likes to say things that I can’t just let go without arguing! He said the other day that he could not understand people that are against programs that (he claim) are meant to fight hunger, while supporting scholarships that pay for doctorate students to live abroad.

That statement really shocked me, as I was just thinking at the time about the whole idea of scholarships, and the alternatives for people who want to work with science, and how schools work… All of that combined with what Brazil needs, and what the world needs, and what the cities I live in needs… So, are doctorate scholarships just some kind social program? Can’t we turn science more like something we can consider a “real job”? I doubt the president considers all public employees as members of some kind of welfare program. Why is the comparison with doctorate students fair, and not with his own job?

Of course the concept of “real job”, and the way scientists work all around the world can differ widely. I hope that meeting people through the Internet I can get in touch with different views about all that problems, so we can help each other building a funnier and happier mankind…

OK, I hope that’s enough of local and global politics and mundane problems for a good deal of time. That’s hardly my favourite subject to write about. :)