Post-It Animation: Melissa Power of Love

As a follow-up to my previous post on Melissa's 500,000 post-it façade on Oscar Freire street (link) here's an impressive animation the Melissa guys did as part of the same project:

Someone invested a lot of patience into this project..

Reflections on São Paulo H1 crime figures 2011 vs 2010

Following a scandal over the sociologist Túlio Kahn who is accused of supressing his own crime figures whilst clandestinely selling the data to private companies, Geraldo Alckmin, the governor of São Paulo, anounced that forthwith crime figures would be published monthly and broken down by district as opposed to every 3 months at city level only. That was back in March 2011.

Now that the full first semester is in we have the usual articles comparing 2011 to 2010 and yesterday a good few were celebrating a 29% fall in homicides in São Paulo capital. Now, don't get me wrong, a drop in murder rate is usually a good thing but there is some detail in the stats that doesn't make as nice reading as the 29% fall headline would seem to imply:

• First up, violent crime may have dropped in the last few years for various reasons and some may have dropped versus 2010 which is all good but they have dropped from an already very high level - however big the city is if you compare the below figures with the same 180day period in most western countries your per capita incidence metric will be through the roof. 

• Although murder fell by 29%, attempted murder (which is similar in terms of intent but perhaps lacking in execution (excuse the pun, poor taste I know)) rose by 18% which suggests that the murder drop is not as dramatic and part of it is perhaps coincidental. Either that or the assasins are getting clumsier. 

• Murder is not the only crime on the list. Drug trafficking is up, as is car theft and GBH. As you can imagine these were not exactly low in 2010 but they all increased. Car ownership did increase too so we would have to look at whether the rise is proportional (i.e. the risk to car owners is the same) but in absolute terms in went up 

• Another interesting one to notice is that the incident of hostage/kidnapping for ransom is actually statistically very low. If you were to judge by the conversations of the wealthier residents of São Paulo they would have you believe this was extremely likely to happen, everyone has a story they have heard about kidnapping, but if you look at the stats there were only 13 cases in H1 2011. Unlucky number for some but contrary to the media hype around it quite a low number for a city of 20m. So maybe a nice topic to sell papers with but not necessarily the most worrying criminal activity in SP.

Full table below (sorry, no translation this time)

Ocorrências na capital paulista	1º semestre 2010	1º semestre 2011	Diferença
Nº de vítimas de latrocínio	32	47	47%
Latrocínio	32	46	44%
Tentativa de homicídio	480	567	18%
Furto (outros)	83.320	98.112	18%
Tráfico de entorpecentes	2.802	3.263	16%
Lesão corporal dolosa	17.038	19.765	16%
Roubo de veículos	17.414	18.796	8%
Roubo a banco	76	78	3%
Furto de veículos	21.106	21.076	0%
Estupro	1.210	1.186	-2%
Lesão corporal culposa por acidente de trânsito	13.422	13.002	-3%
Roubo de carga	2.186	2.108	-4%
Roubo (inclui roubo de carga e banco)	56.676	54.026	-5%
Homicídio culposo (inclui mortes em acidentes)	460	428	-7%
Homicídio culposo por acidente de trânsito	426	378	-11%
Nº de vítimas em homicídio doloso	596	501	-16%
Homicídio doloso	568	470	-17%
Extorsão mediante sequestro	16	13	-19%
Lesão corporal culposa (outras)	998	799	-20%

São Paulo Knit Café advertises via knitted lamp posts

Readers of Discovering São Paulo will remember the post about painted lamp posts (link) scattered around the city. I still don’t know whether this is spontaneous creativity by a handful of individuals or whether there is a reason behind it but a few days ago I found the next level of painted lamp posts. These are knitted lamp posts. Yes, knitted. The street name for this is Yarn Bombing” (bombardeio de novelos in portuguese) or grandma grafitti (grafite da vovó in portuguese).

 

Here’s a couple of pictures of the lamp posts on Mourato Coleho 678 in Vila Madalena. 

Close up of a knitted lamp post

This tree is knitted too

In this case this is street marketing for the new Knit Café Novelaria. And before you ask what a Knit café is here are some pictures.

Knit with friends on the sofas

Choose your wool and knit away

The idea is you come in, buy some wool, order a coffee and sit down to knit with other members of the local knitting community. I don’t think I’m personally taking up knitting anytime soon but it’s a novel concept :)

São Paulo: 10th most expensive place to send an expat

We increasingly need bigger notes than this one down in São Paulo...

Every year Mercer does a study of the cost of 200 items to derive a comparative ranking of the cost of living in various cities worldwide, or more accurately the cost to a company of sending an expat to live there.

This year the top Brazilian city, and the top South American city for that matter, is São Paulo, up 11 places and in the Top 10 global wallet munchers for the first time. In fact it's not only the highest placed South American city, it's been ranked as more expensive than any US city too and by quite a margin.

And while the economic downturn has kicked European cities down the ranking, Brazil with the help of its strong Real has other cities jumping up the ranking after São Paulo; Rio is up 17 places to 12th spot and Brasilia up 37 places to 33rd place.

Yes, security is factored in (which is why Luanda is at No 1 spot) and yes, it is subject to global inflationa and currency fluctuations but every algorithm needs its assumption and it's good enough for me to think about asking my company to do the right thing, protect my purchasing power and raise my salary...

Rankings
March 2011	March 2010	City	Country
1	1	LUANDA	ANGOLA
2	2	TOKYO	JAPAN
3	3	N'DJAMENA	CHAD
4	4	MOSCOW	RUSSIA
5	5	GENEVA	SWITZERLAND
6	6	OSAKA	JAPAN
7	8	ZURICH	SWITZERLAND
8	11	SINGAPORE	SINGAPORE
9	8	HONG KONG	HONG KONG
10	21	SÂO PAULO	BRAZIL
11	19	NAGOYA	JAPAN
12	7	LIBREVILLE	GABON
12	29	RIO DE JANEIRO	BRAZIL
14	24	SYDNEY	AUSTRALIA
15	11	OSLO	NORWAY
16	22	BERN	SWITZERLAND
17	10	COPENHAGEN	DENMARK
18	17	LONDON	UNITED KINGDOM
19	14	SEOUL	SOUTH KOREA
20	16	BEIJING	CHINA
21	25	SHANGHAI	CHINA
21	33	MELBOURNE	AUSTRALIA
23	23	NIAMEY	NIGER
24	19	TEL AVIV	ISRAEL
25	13	VICTORIA	SEYCHELLES
25	15	MILAN	ITALY
27	17	PARIS	FRANCE
28	67	OUAGADOUGOU	BURKINA FASO
29	30	ST. PETERSBURG	RUSSIA
30	60	PERTH	AUSTRALIA
31	55	BRISBANE	AUSTRALIA
32	27	NEW YORK CITY, NY	UNITED STATES
33	70	BRASILIA	BRAZIL
34	26	ROME	ITALY
34	74	CANBERRA	AUSTRALIA
36	28	VIENNA	AUSTRIA
37	38	NOUMÉA	NEW CALEDONIA
38	38	GUANGZHOU	CHINA
39	62	DJIBOUTI	DJIBOUTI
39	76	STOCKHOLM	SWEDEN
41	62	LAGOS	NIGERIA
42	31	HELSINKI	FINLAND
43	42	SHENZHEN	CHINA
44	32	DAKAR	SENEGAL
44	141	KHARTOUM	SUDAN
46	90	ADELAIDE	AUSTRALIA
47	47	PRAGUE	CZECH REPUBLIC
48	36	BAKU	AZERBAIJAN
49	33	BANGUI	CENTRAL AFRICAN REP.
50	35	AMSTERDAM	NETHERLANDS

Sweetcorn ice cream

I went to the supermarket yesterday and in the frozen food section, in amongst the double choc and mango sorbet I spotted some milho verde (aka sweetcorn) ice cream made by Kibon, who you may know as Walls, Algida, Frisko, Eskimo etc depending on where you've lived/travelled.

Iit's an interesting flavour for usre and I haven't seen it anywhere else in the world but I must admit I backed out of trying it on this occasion. Maybe next time...

Great photos on Folha's sport section

I always look forward to reading the Folha de São Paulo's sport section and it's partly because it always has a great front page photo + caption combo. Here's a couple of recent ones I liked:

São Paulo crashing out of the Copa do Brasil

Neymar taking the headlines again as Santos wins the Paulistão

Keeping it simple on Thursday night

Every now and again, even in hectic São Paulo, sometimes you find the best way to enjoy yourself is to keep it simple.

Here's a video from a bar I was at a couple of Thursday's ago. This is known as a "roda de samba"