Traffic fine for 880 km/hr (550 mph)

An engineer named Rafeal de Andrade has not been able to renew his vehicle registration this year because his car owes R$ 127.69 ($78.19) to the Department of Transportation of Rio de Janeiro for a fine that he refuses to pay.

The department that is accusing the engineer for driving 880 kph (about 550 mph) according to an automatic radar in Niteroi (near Rio de Janeiro) in a 60 kph zone (37 mph). The following information has been translated from the Brazilian site called G1.

Rafael appealed the decision with the Department. He imagined that the fine would be forgiven, but it was not. For the Department of Transportation in Brasilia, vehicle registration can only be released once fines are paid. “I refuse to pay the fine”, he said. “I don’t have registration, and if I am stopped, I want to know what I am going to say to the officer,” he complained.

The race car driver Rodolfo Santos considers this allegation absurd. “There is not one car in Formula One that could reach 880 kph. I drive the fastest car in South American and we can only get up to 270kph (168 mph) and that is fast enough.”

Rafael’s car is a 1.0 liter VW Gol.

According to the National Deparment of Transportation, Rafael will have to pay the fine to appeal to the State Transit Council. But the engineer has already decided to file a lawsuit that will ask for a reprise, under the basis of “legal and factual impossibility of a 1.0 liter VW Gol ever reaching 880 kph on a Brazilian highway.”

Translated from Portuguese- Multa por trafegar a 880 km/h

Cops mugging cops- Rio, Brazil

From Reuters-

RIO DE JANEIRO: Rio de Janeiro police arrested two fellow officers yesterday accused of extorting money from two American tourists who happened to be San Francisco cops on vacation.
“One of the victims identified the officers and they are under administrative arrest for now,” a police spokeswoman in Rio said.
The crime-ridden city is swarming with tourists during the Pan American Games, which end on Sunday.
The US tourists were leaving a night club in Rio’s Copacabana beach neighbourhood before dawn on Wednesday, when two uniformed police officers approached them and searched them for drugs.
At night, the neighbourhood is a red-light district with several brothels and strip joints.
Although no drugs were found, the officers told the tourists they would have to pay a bribe or be arrested. One of the Americans went back to their hotel to fetch the equivalent of some $2,200 in local and foreign currency.
The Brazilian policemen then took off with the money and an MP3 player.
Corruption is rife in Rio’s police force despite the authorities’ efforts to root out bad cops.  – Reuters

Brazilians are idiots

I don’t have anything more to say, there are at this moment 26 comments about some game that Brazil won against the United States. WHO CARES? A Brazilian blogger told his readers to go and bother me about this, and these comments are rude, insensitive, etc. If you have any problems with this, leave a constructive comment. Until that time arrives, all Brazilians are idiots. By the way, the comments are irrelevant to the post…

Understand here. 

BraZilians don’t even know why BraZil is spelled with a Z

Hello, I have read and heard many Brazilians that argue about a silly letter in the English spelling of their country. Sure, we know it’s Brasil in Portuguese, but in English, it’s Brazil.

I thought the whole thing was silly, but there was quite a fight about it on Wikipedia.

In short, the reason why the country is spelled BRAZIL in English is because this is what the country was called when it was founded.

Here is a quotation from an editor on Wikipedia to try to put an end to this silly debate:

Since many people interested in this debate are foreigners and thus don’t have in-depth knowledge of Brazilian History, I want to add Brazil used to be officially called “Imperio do Brazil”. To check this information, see the 1824 Brazilian Constitution in http://www.presidencia.gov.br/legislacao/constituicao where it’s published with the original grammar.

After the Republic was established, the country officially adopted “Republica dos Estados Unidos do Brazil” as its name. Yes, that’s right. Brazil with a “Z”. It surely gives us a very good explanation to why Brazil is spelt with a “z” in English – it’s the way it was originally spelt in Brazilian Portuguese too. Later, of course, “Brasil” was incorporated by grammar reforms and “Brazil” was scrapped, though in other languages (like English) the original spelling was maintained.

Ironically, turns out spelling Brazil with a “z” actually supports the original Brazilian Portuguese roots and therefore in no way diminishes Brazilian culture.

Anyhow, the etymologies of words in English or any language are complex, and it just takes a little digging. Another word, macaw, is the English word for arara. A Brazilian told me, why do you change the word totally for this word? I looked it up in an etymology dictionary and found the word comes from an old Portuguese word – macao. So there you go.

Finally, you should remember, you call the city of London, Londres and nobody there in London cares

(originally written by ME at http://www.englishexperts.net/2007/04/its-brazil-in-english.html

TAM- the world’s worst airline from Washington Post

I was reading something in the Washington Post, and I came across this article.  An American had a bad experience with TAM in Brazil. I flew TAM in March from Congonhas Airport in Sao Paulo to Goiania in the center region of Brazil. On the way back, I flew TAM from Goiania to Guarlhos, Sao Paulo’s international airport. The flight on the way back was very delayed, with no announcements or any indication as to what was happening. I almost missed my international flight because of this. Anyhow, here are a few paragraphs from that article-

TAM Linhas Aereas is the worst airline in the world. I’ve been saying that since early April, when my boyfriend and I took a short vacation in Brazil and returned happy with our stay but traumatized by the air travel. So last week when a TAM Airbus 320 on an inbound domestic route skidded off the Sao Paulo airport runway, tried to take off again, and crashed into a cargo building owned by the same carrier, exploding on impact and incinerating nearly 200 people, I felt angrily (and okay, smugly) justified in my condemnation.

We flew TAM from New York to Sao Paulo and then to Manaus, back to Sao Paulo then to Rio de Janeiro, back to Sao Paulo again, then back to New York, all in the space of nine days. Every flight was delayed by hours or canceled.

The larger problems can be attributed to the constraints under which Brazil forces TAM to operate. Nearly every flight to a major Brazilian city from a major metropolitan area is compulsively routed through the largest city in the country. If you want to fly direct, it probably won’t be on a Brazilian carrier. As it happens, the largest city’s airport has the most infamously short runway. The runway at Sao Paulo is 6,362 feet long — 641 feet shorter than that of La Guardia and too short for the pilot of TAM Flight 3054 to land safely on a wet surface, which caused him to try to take off again, with catastrophic results.

This is normal procedure in Sao Paulo. Pilots are instructed to do it when the allotted stretch of runway won’t suffice. To add to the risk, the runway was repaved in June, which may have resulted in the already dangerously short stretch being dangerously slippery as well.

If you manage to make it safely onto or off the runway, you still have to contend with Brazilian air-traffic control, which is run by the Brazilian military, an increasingly disenfranchised institution that has resisted transition to civilian control — perhaps because in peacetime, it needs reasons to justify its existence. Air traffic infrastructure is woefully out of date; upgrading it, while ultimately necessary, is considered too expensive. The consequences of Brazil’s patchy radar system were particularly apparent in September when a Boeing 737 operated by another major Brazilian airline hit a private jet over part of the Amazon, with 154 casualties — an event that led air-traffic controllers to strike, saying they were being unfairly blamed. <<end quoted material

Source: Washington Post 

As expected, Anti-Bush protests have begun

In South American-style, the protests are in full swing in Brazil. Bush is on a tour of Latin America, and is visiting the country of Brazil today. The two presidents are holding talks about a possible energy alliance, and the future of ethanol as an alternative energy.

This is what I picked up from CNN-

“Bush and the United States go to war to control oil reserves, and now Bush and his pals are trying to control the production of ethanol in Brazil. And that has to be stopped,” said Suzanne Pereira dos Santos, an activist with Brazil’s Landless Workers Movement.

Graffiti reading “Get Out, Bush! Assassin!” appeared on walls near the locations Bush will drive past as he begins a Latin American tour that also includes stops in Uruguay, Colombia, Guatemala and Mexico.

Bush will not visit Argentina. However, leftist Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez will travel to Buenos Aires to lead protests against Bush on Friday.

Source: CNN