If anyone has suggestions for a crash-course in Portuguese, let me know!

For reasons that make no sense to me, buying a one-way ticket from Santiago to São Paulo on LAN airlines costs almost 650 USD, but buying a round-trip ticket with a return leg on some random date in August cost only 400 USD.

One of my friends claims that this pricing has to do with market variation and flexibility: the airline is better off getting that August ticket sold now, since they don’t know what the airfare market will look like in August. I still say there’s something really screwy going on when two tickets cost less than one ticket.

So Sao Paulo is basically like LA in Blade Runner, with fewer androids. Most of the fancy hotels and bars/clubs here have helipads on the roof. The Brazilians tell me that many well-to-do Paulistanos get around the city by helicopter taxi, in order to avoid the atrocious traffic and dangerous streets.

Obviously, this trend is indicative of the city’s tremendous failure to provide adequate transportation and safety for its citizens. On the other hand, it’s also super awesome. I’m told that a heli-taxi ride costs between $40 and $50 USD, and I fully intend to take one before I leave. I’ve never even been in a helicopter before!

Sao Paulo is an absolutely enormous city. Luckily, there’s a subway and surface trams you can take to avoid traffic and get around. Unfortunately, the map of the Sao Paulo metro system is a bit…optimistic. Looking closely at the legend above, you’ll see that all of line 4 and half of line 2 are “under construction”. Half of line 5, and chunks of lines E and F, as well as the airport connection are only “in planning”. This can be kind of frustrating when trying to plan a trip:
“Oh, I can just take the…oh wait, that doesn’t exist yet. Oh, then I’ll just have to transfer at…oh, that station isn’t open either. Well, looks like I’m taking the bus.”

Don’t get me wrong, it’s great that they’re expanding their metro network. I’m sure in 2010-2012, all those lines will be really useful. But right now, their presence on the map is just a tease.

Tuesday, there was an afterparty at a Cuban bar, with similar open bar. Wednesday, I went out for drinks with the conference organizers, I recorded a brief interview I’ll try to type up later.  Thursday, I got drinks (again) with a really cool Brazilian hacker/security researcher guy. So basically, my liver probably hates me (I took Friday night off), but I’ve been having an awesome time.

I’ve done kind of a poor job of writing about things as they happened, so there’s a bunch of stuff in Chile that I should try to go back and cover. Apologies if that makes this kind of hard to follow. One cool thing a Chilean hacker showed me is actually less of a hack, and more of just a “why would they make it like that?” security failure.

Unlike Buenos Aires, where every bus line is a separate company competing against each other and fighting tooth-and-nail against a unified payment system, Santiago has a very convenient contactless smartcard system (called the “bip!”—”beep!” in Spanish—card) for both buses and metro lines. However, for reasons that are totally beyond me, the Santiago transit system has decided to make all the information about the movements of anyone using their bip card accessible to anyone who cares to see it.

If you go to this website, and then click on “Saldo y Movemientos” you can enter my Bip card number (08969210) in the field for “Ingrese su Nº Tarjeta bip!”, choose to see the last 90 days, and click “Acceptar” to see every place that I added money to the card or took a bus or metro during my time in Santiago.

To be fair, I paid cash for the card, so my bip number isn’t actually personally identifying information (or it wasn’t until I wrote this blog post, anyway). But for university students in Santiago, their student ID card doubles as a bip pass, and that student ID number IS personally identifiable. Plus, I’m sure many people pay for their bip card with a credit card, or tie their bip card to a credit account so it will automatically debit to recharge.

Furthermore, if you really just wanted to creep on a random stranger, the bip card number is printed on the receipt you get for adding value to the card. As you’d expect, most of these receipts are immediately abandoned in garbage cans or on the floor of the metro station. It would be trivial to retrieve one and then monitor that person’s movement.

I don’t have any objection to a city transit agency tracking its ridership, especially when done in a way that’s more-or-less anonymous. Obviously, it helps them to see which lines are busy, where they need to add buses, trains, and so forth. What I don’t understand is why they decided to make this information available the way they do.

What could the possible advantage to riders be? I guess it might theoretically be convenient to check the balance on your card from the internet. But surely you already know the places you’ve gone, right? Making that data accessible to the public with no authentication is only a minor security vulnerability, but it’s also a completely unnecessary one.

Yeah, that's pretty sweet.

Bookstores come in basically two varieties. You have your large, well-lit chain bookstores with broad shelves and fancy displays of the new soon-to-be bestsellers. They smell like fresh ink and are filled with employees who will look your request up on the computer because they’ve never heard of that author. These are your Barnes and Noble’s, your Borderses.

On the other hand, you have your small, dusty, independent/used bookstores, with books stacked to the ceiling on all sides, and no room for special displays. These stores smell like musty, yellowed pages and their employees will not only recognize your requested author immediately, but suggest somebody else who is actually much better, really (they will then quietly judge you for your inferior taste). Exemplars of this variety include City Lights, and Quimby’s Books, but the best ones sometimes don’t even have a name.

I think most readers tend to have a strong predilection for one or the other variety of bookstore, but I actually like them both pretty well. To me, the two are each enjoyable in their own way, but not directly comparable across categories. Today, in Sao Paulo, I wandered into what may be my favorite bookstore of the large-and-corporate type.

As you can see from the photo above, the Livaria Cultura (“Cultural Bookstore”?) is huge, with 3 or 4 different levels, and wide, sloping ramps connecting them. The selection of books was quite broad, although they didn’t have what I was looking for in English. They seemed to stock books by genre, with little regard to the language of publication. Portuguese, English, Spanish, and even a few French and Italian titles all sat next to each other on the shelves, evidence of the patronage of a well-educated segment of the Brazilian population.

There was a nice little starbucks-inspired coffee bar, and the beanbag chairs and staggered risers were super comfy as well. Oh, and there’s that pretty awesome articulated dragon, too.

Yes, you can sit inside this dragon and read.

This quixotic figure stood just outside the main entrance.

Avast! Thar be pirates!

However, yesterday, I noticed one street vendor selling the first non-pirated piece of software I’ve seen:

Yes, that is a shady, bootleg-looking copy of Kurumin Linux. I bought it, mostly for the novelty factor, and as a souvenir. But also on the theory that I was supporting free software in some minor way (although probably more directly supporting shady street vendors).

For reasons that I have trouble articulating, the idea of selling pirated software seems more objectionable to me than simply giving it away free over a file-sharing network. I think it’s a moral distinction: profiting from somebody else’s work seems dishonest. Legally, I’m not aware of any distinction between illegally “distributing” copyrighted works on a street corner or on bittorent.

I think current intellectual property law is badly broken and in need of major reform, but I’m not a big fan of software piracy, either. Not only does piracy potentially hurt developers, but it also distorts the market and probably hampers the adoption of free software.

What’s ironic is that I’m sure the vendor had no idea that the Brazilian Linux distro was the only thing on his table (ok, cardboard box) that he actually is allowed to sell legally. When I said I wanted to buy it, he flipped through a big CD wallet, but didn’t find a copy. He told me to wait for 5 minutes, stashed his cardboard display in an alley, and disappeared. A while later, he came back with the disc, and made sort of a quick, sketchy hand-off.

Anyway, last night, I flew to Rio de Janiero. There’s a weekly street party Friday nights underneath the Carioca Aquaduct, so I went out to that. It was a really cool, lively scene, with samba, live music, colorful clothes and dirt cheap food and drinks.

I wish I had photos, but I try not to take a camera out at night in Brazil. So far on this trip, I feel like I’ve done reasonably well at avoiding theft. I was short-changed by a cabbie in Buenos Aires, and I lost my previous camera on the overnight bus, but I haven’t been mugged or lost anything really important.

In Brazil, I’m orders of magnitude more paranoid about theft than I have been in any other country. I’m used to being told, “oh, tourists shouldn’t go to that part of town,” but here in Brazil, even the locals seem really cautious. In Sao Paulo, when driving at night, everyone rolls through red lights because if you’re sitting stopped at a light, somebody might run up and rob you or take your car (I hadn’t realized the tactic I use in Grand Theft Auto was effective in real life as well).

When I go out at night here, I take only my old Pomona student ID (I actually have a Watson Fellowship ID too, but it’s closer to passport-sized and therefore really inconvenient to carry) and as much cash as I think I’ll need; I leave my bankcard, driver’s license, and camera. Last night at the street party, I was dancing when I felt a hand slip into my left front pocket. Since it wasn’t that kind of dancing, I was pretty surprised. I looked, and there was a guy next to me blatantly grabbing for my wallet. I shoved him, and said something appropriately meaningless but internationally interpretable like, “Hey! What the fuck, man!”

I’m not exactly sure what reaction I was expecting. Quickly slinking away? Feigned confusion and denial (“Oh, see, I thought I was reaching into my pocket! My mistake.”)? Trying to pass it off as a gay pass? In any case, his actual reaction was probably funnier. He just kind of stared at me with this shocked, indignant look, like he couldn’t believe that I might actually be offended by his comically-obvious attempt to pickpocket me. We stared at each other for 5 or 10 seconds, and then he moved off, presumably to try again on somebody drunker.

In truth, this is only the second goofiest reaction I’ve gotten from somebody trying to rip me off on this trip. In Florence, I went out for drinks with my friend Rachel, and we paid the bartender with a €20 note; he brought back change for a €10. When we called him on it, he just laughed and gave us the correct change, while saying, “Ha! You caught me! (Do we win a prize?) I have to try, you know, I always have to try…”

I’m glad I held onto my wallet, but I also feel like maybe I should have done something more to raise the marginal cost of pickpocket attempts. There were plenty of cops around, but by the time I approached one and explained myself there’s no way they would have caught the guy. Maybe I should have hit him, but the chance of inciting a street brawl made that option less appealing.

I understand that petty theft is going to be an issue any time you have rich westerners and crippling poverty in close proximity. I am not an absolutist when it comes to property rights, and the gross disparity in relative need complicates the moral calculus. In Buenos Aires, one night I was walking home eating a takeout pizza when a bunch of street children begged away all my slices. I don’t care what you think of Lew Rockwell, you’d have to be a monster to look a hungry child in the face and go right back to eating your cheese and pepperoni.

That said, I am not such a bleeding heart that I’m just going to let you take my wallet.

“There is an art, it says, or rather a knack to flying.

The knack lies in learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.

Pick a nice day, it suggests, and try it.

The first part is easy.”

On Monday, I decided to take that advice to heart. I’d been looking for something big I could do to cap off my travels, and jumping out of an airplane seemed to qualify. What follows is a collection of photographs and observations from that experience.

The company I jumped with is called Skydive Rio. They actually weren’t that professional. It took them several days to get around to replying to my initial email; half the time they didn’t answer their phone. When I asked about how to get to the Jacarepaguá Airport where they’re based, they were like “oh, just take a cab,” but eventually agreed to pick me up from a shopping center at the edge of town. I took the bus out to the mall and spent about 30 minutes waiting for them. They finally did come get me in the crappy little red Fiat pictured above. It was stuffed to the gills with skydiving gear.

Unloading all the parachutes. Skydive Rio seems like it’s almost less a money-making business and more just a bunch of guys who like to jump out of planes and figured out how to get other people to pay them to do it.

Me, trying to look really confident about everything.