Greenpeace in Portugal

It seems that Greenpeace soon will start a 3 year long campaign in Portugal!

Yippiee!

Sexual harassment is part of the academic tradition in Coimbra

I just had a quick look through the "newspaper" académico 20070605.

Under the section "na regiao" Ricardo Rio makes a story about the majority in the city council in Braga not wanting to have an external analysis of their performance. Specifically in relation to (the lack of) sustainability thinking. And he ends with a very ironic touch :-)

Later on in this issue is an article that says that 3 out of 4 Portuguese students cheat on their exams. And those that cheat do that already at high school. One sociologist in the articles says that the teacher are allowed some room for alterations in the examinations. He suggest making the exams such that the students should apply what they are supposed to have learnt rather than just regurgitating memorised data.

On a note: students seem to sit very close to each other. One way to avoid is to randomise the order of the questions. At least one pair of students at UMinho have been caught just copying the answer in the numerical order. Funny, no thinking at all during the exam ... at least for some ...

The "council of veterans" at the university of Soimbra has punished two persons by "downgrading" them to freshmen status because they damaged the scrotum of one student and severly bruised another. In some kind of backwards defence the head honcho of hazers said that they were only supposed to shave off the pubic hair above the penis. The sheer stupidity of this José Luís Jesus is just amazing!!! One student made a complaint to this "council of veterans" which of course does not have any real power. The other made a much wiser choice and made a formal complaint to the police. I have an idea: all praxistas must be eunuchs!

Agros

There is a new organic milk in Portugal.
Agros (and Lactogal) has spent some money on putting up billboards about their organic milk in Portugal.

But the milk itself is made in France.

According to my favorite ecosalesperson it is because Agros and Lactogal does not want to pay more for organic than conventional milk. But of course they want to charge the consumer twice the price for organic compared with conventional milk. So one perhaps should not be surprised that there yet are no Portuguese organic milk (or milk derived products).

I wrote a letter to Agros some months ago but have yet not received any answer. The certifier says he wants to bring French organic farmers to Portugal, but as long as the farmers cannot expect better price nothing much will happen ...

Moreover, I cannot find information on their website(www.agros.pt), although they apparently has spent plenty of money on a PR campaign in Portugal.

Oddly enough they have a news flash from almost exactly a year ago stating that milk from organic production is not more secure nor better than conventional milk. This is also the only information on milk from organic agriculture on their website
(today 2007-04-25).

Read more (in Portuguese):

http://www.agros.pt/Noticias/noticia173.htm

Leite Biológico Não É Melhor nem Mais Seguro que o
Convencional
3/29/2006 2:04:00 PM

Um estudo da Universidade de Berna, na Suíça, que
comparou o leite biológico com o leite convencional,
concluiu que não existe nenhuma diferença entre ambos,
no que respeita à qualidade, valor nutricional ou
segurança para o consumidor.

Outra das conclusões da pesquisa, avança o
Agrodigital, é que as vacas biológicas produzem, em
média, menos 12% de leite, devido à sua alimentação
ser menos rica em energia, já que não é permitida a
adição de suplementos. No entanto, o consumo de
energia global por litro de leite é maior neste tipo
de produção.

Fonte: Agrodigital