Category Archives: Italian references

Why it’s right to send scientists to jail for L’Aquila earthquake. And why not.

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The recent sentence of an Italian court that condemned 7 people to jail after the earthquake in L’Aquila has had quite a bit of coverage on the international media.

The sentence is implicitly accepting an idea that is growing stronger with time and with the increase in the mankind technological prowess: that man can dominate nature.
To say it in an old-fashioned way the idea that we are finally becoming god-like.

If it’s true that science and technology make us omnipotent then it’s right to condemn the scientists that did not evacuated the city.

I believe that this is not the case: each one may like it or not, but no one can decide and ensure that will wakeup in the morning one week from now.
We’re not omnipotent.

We have to do everything carefully based on the current knowledge and it’s right to condemn someone who saved on the iron when building going below the regulatory levels causing the death of a person during the earthquake.
Condemning someone cause he’s not God is not right.

Content of my reading list by amazon (part 6 of 9)

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A bit of acceleration today: two slices of my reading list in one day.
Below you’ll find the sixth part.

You can read why I’m doing this and can also the first , the second, the third,the fourth and the fifth part of the list that I’ve already published.

Saturday, Oct 2 2010
Corporate Social Responsibility: Doing the Most Good for Your Company and Your Cause by Philip Kotler, Nancy Lee
Very specific, may be of interest to a relatively small audience.

Saturday, Sep 25 2010
The Eternal Husband by Fyodor DOSTOEVSKY
I’ve read other works of Dostoevsky, but having read the analysis of Renè Girard about this one I was able to enjoy it more than I enjoyed the others.
Being relatively short and restricted to a limited environment and a small number of people it’s easy and quick to read.
The image of Pavel Pavlovich depicted is so real that at the end I felt sorry for him.

Friday, Aug 27 2010
Mission of Gravity by Hal Clement
Not bad but in my opinion there are better alternatives in hte SF to invest the reading time. I’ve read the italian translation.

Monday, Aug 16 2010
Nova Swing by M. John Harrison, Jim Frangione
I’ve found the book unbeliveably boring and hoped until the last few pages to get some surprising conclusion providing a meaning to the text but did not happen.
Looked like the chronicle of what was passing trough the mind of a LSD addicted: no real beginning, no real end, no real story.
I strongly discourage my friends to read it.

L’arte di persuadere: Come impararla, come esercitarla, come difendersene by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
Great reading, strongly suggested.
It’s not a manual or an how-to guide, but provides an interesting perspective on the subject of persuasion

Friday, Aug 6 2010
I’m OK–You’re OK Thomas Harris

Saturday, Jul 31 2010
Escolios a un texto implicito by Nicolas Gomez Davila
Great reading, strongly suggested.
I’ll keep it in reach to give a quick read to a couple of pages from time to time.
I don’t like writing on books, but this one is really taking notes with impression.
I’ve read the italian translation.

Friday, Jul 16 2010
Kotler on Marketing by Philip Kotler
Recommended

Thursday, Jul 15 2010
Ritrattino di Kant a uso di mio figlio by Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini
unbelievably easy introduction to Kant. Strongly recommended.

Friday, Jul 9 2010
Norstrilia by Cordwainer Smith
I had a long travel to do and decided to take this book (the italian translation)with me.
It turned out to be an entertaining read

Content of my reading list by amazon (part 5 of 9)

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Hi,
Below you’ll find the fifth part of my reading list and, when available, the related comments I made at the time.

I did a small mistake and got 4 and 5 reversed 🙂

You can read why I’m doing this and can also the first , the second, the third and the fourth part of the list that I’ve already published on this blog.

Sunday, Mar 7 2010
The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling by James Hillman
Recommended

Kinds of Power by James Hillman
Recommended

Thursday, Mar 4 2010
Human Factors in Safety-Critical Systems by Felix Redmill, Jane Rajan
Recommended
While the title suggests this book as with a limited audience I think that every worker should read it.
The analysis of how people interacts with systems and organization can be applied to non-safety-critical scenarios too.
This knowledge will help both individual contributors and managers.

Saturday, Feb 13 2010
A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr., Mary Doria Russell

Thursday, Jan 7 2010
Oscar and the Lady in Pink by ERIC-EMMANUEL SCHMITT
Recommended
At the first reading, several months ago, I enjoyed this little book but recently I discovered that I almost forgot all the content, so i decided to read it again.
I’m really happy with that decision: while the book is small and written with a very easy and light style the content of those few pages is extremely dense.
It’s uncommon to read in less than 80 pages so much about the meaning of the life and of the death.”

Wednesday, Jan 6 2010
Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque by René Girard
Recommended
I think that the book requires a fresh reading of the analyzed novels in order to provide the full benefit of the offered analysis, but at least 75% of the content can be appreciated in any case.
The value offered is not limited to a greater understanding of the literature but, as it continuously relates back to the real world, it can be at least partially applied in daily experience.
I’ve actually read the italian translation.

La vittima e la folla by Renè Girard
Recommended
The perspective that the author offers on the myth is extraordinary ad helps to see in a different light most of the recent theological thinking that describes the gospel as mostly mythical and fictions.
It’s a book easy enough for people w/o a background on philosophy or theology , but a minimum of classical greek culture would help for sure.

Friday, Oct 23 2009
Milano Calibro 9 by G. Scerbanenco
I liked a lot these short stories.
Dark as is usually Scerbanenco but with a twist of irony that is not very common in the novels
Recommended

Saturday, Oct 17 2009
Traditori di tutti by Giorgio Scerbanenco
Recommended

Tuesday, Oct 13 2009
Ladro contro assassino by Giorgio Scerbanenco
Recommended

Guest of Giuseppe Zen @ Mangiari di strada

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Yesterday it was quite late for lunch (3pm) but I did an attempt to check if I could eat at Mangiari di strada in Milan.
They were already taking away the food so I was ready to turn back and skip the lunch altogether when Giuseppe noticed my presence and invited me to join him and his friends for a late lunch.
I felt a bit of discomfort as it was about being a guest instead of a customer and I never had met the other people before.

Well it was good to resist the temptation to leave.

Giuseppe prepared for us his interpretation of the spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino (detail of preparation later in the post) and black bread with butter and salted anchovies.

Spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino is a common last-minute disk in Italy and for a reason: the everyday version is about getting garlic and chili pepper to fry in olive oil and then use the oil to dress the spaghetti.
Giuseppe could not go for something that easy and did his interpretation of this classic:
1) instead of getting the garlic in boiling oil he had the oil in the oven at 70 celsius during the night with the garlic inside to get the flavor without altering the natural taste of the oil with the high temperature.
2) he added a second layer of garlic by making a cream with garlic and milk (with a different garlic than the one used for the oil)
3) the chili pepper was added as a paprika-like powder made with his own peppers
All the rest is the chef secret.

Giuseppe’s version tasted better and more complex than the classical one and I had no garlic taste in my mouth in the afternoon.
Sure it’s not a last-minute preparation anymore but I’ll take his interpretation over the traditional any time if I’m offered the option.

The butter and the anchovies were not the average run of the mill either:
the butter had a clear taste of the grass like in the best cheeses and the anchovies maintained the taste of the fresh fish that usually is completely missing in the salted version that are commonly available.

Dinner @ Al pompiere

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In 1999 and 2000 I used to eat at this restaurant quite often and with good satisfaction: I wondered if the place was the place still worth the visit after 12 years.
I was in Rome on a business trip and took the opportunity to test it.

I got the 3 classical fried starters baccalà, fiore di zucca (zucchini flower stuffed with mozzarella cheese and a salted anchovies) and carciofo alla giudia (artichoke), as main course I got costolette di abbacchio panate (fried suckling lamb ribs) with puntarelle as a side dish. Withe wine of the house.
Last but not least the dessert: a very nice cake, crostata di ricotta e visciole.

I was overall satisfied with only a couple of exception:
The flower was only acceptable, not great.
The wine gave me a headache the day after.
The bill was a relevant one (55€): skipping the flower and the wine it would have been a good deal for the quality.

Do I recommend the place? If money is not an objection yes, if your budget is limited and your hunger is not I’d say no.
If you happen to be in the area it’s worth to jump in and see if you can get the crostata di ricotta e visciole only: 6.5€ invested very well.

Corriere Telematico: an electronic magazine from my past

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Exactly 19 years ago I started my earliest experiments writing about technology.
The Corriere Telematico was based on flat ascii file format with a reader that was able to jump to a specific article based on the line number in the file.
I believed that the content was lost given the fact that I was using BBSes at the time and the WWW was not in my horizon but this is not the case.

I wrote, with the nickname Satoru, about the way the cache worked in the early 386 system, about modems when high-speed interoperability was a dream (or a nightmare) due to the number of different standards on the market and about early consumer sound cards with wavetables.

How good a “five star” food is really?

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A few days ago I’ve posted about a very nice crème caramel I had at Mangiari di strada and I defined it “delicious”.

I started to think how to put in perspective the pleasure I had from it.
It was for sure one of the best, if not the best, crème caramel I ever had, but was it worth driving 30 miles for the sole purpose of eating it?

My answer is no and it’s a relatively easy one ’cause I’m more into appetizers and main courses than into desserts.

My reasoning did not stop there and I continued to think of foods and places evaluations based on the distance I would be happy to travel to taste them.
It’s really the complete package of distance plus direct cost that I take into account.

A few examples:
Once or twice a year Lo Dzerby is worth a 200 miles trip.
Mangiari di strada for me is worth a 30 miles trip (even on a weekly basis, given the great number of different great dishes they offer) as a complete eating experience but the single crème caramel is not. Even if it’s five stars without any doubt.

Da servo di Pannella a figlio libero di Dio by Danilo Quinto

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For an Italian the subject is very intriguing and the book generated quite some noise in the press.

At the beginning of my reading I was a bit surprised and almost upset by the fact that the author was citing the Gospel in a book that is not a religious book.

What was even more strange is that this happened to me as I do read also religious books.
It’s like if I’ve absorbed the idea that God should not be part of the normal life hence not part of “normal” books.

The main take home from the book is a confirmation of the fact that the human beings share the same structure and have both strengths and weaknesses.
The second key point is that the power can, and very often does, corrupt.

It’s a common temptation to finger point the weaknesses of the other forgetting our own or, when not failing (yet) ourselves, believing that we resist because we’re ontologically better than the others.

L’incontemporaneo. Péguy, lettore del mondo moderno by Alain Finkielkraut

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In the past I’ve read a few articles written by Alain Finkielkraut and I’ve appreciated his point of view.
This is my fist book written by him: the subject is what got me interested.

I’ve had the opportunity to listen with great pleasure to good readers reading out loud extracts from some of the books of Charles Peguy (“Le Mystère de la charité de Jeanne d’Arc”, “Le Porche du mystère de la deuxième vertu” and “Le Mystère des saints Innocents”)
Fascinated by the content I’ve tried a couple of time to read the books myself, but without success: it looks like they don’t work, at least for me, on the page but only when listening.

This book was a great opportunity to better understand the thinking of Charles Peguy and also the reasons why he’s relegated in a small niche.
Recommended.

Original title: Le Mécontemporain. Charles Péguy, lecteur du monde moderne

Vodafone station issue: round 2

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Today I had again issues with the voice calls using the phone connected to the VF station.

People told me that the my voice recalled them the creature of the black lagoon and that Skype voice quality was way better.
It’s very annoying.

I know that my phone is not directly connected to the PSTN but is actually converted to VOIP by Vodafone’s own router, but this should be transparent to the me as is a VF technical implementation decision and not a hack on my side.

What is interesting is that it looks like the issues started after i got the line upgraded from 7mbit/s to 20mbit/s (not really achieved yet)
Tomorrow I’ll do a test with another phone: if I can’t sort this out soon I’ll revert back to the 7mbit/s and save the money extra money of the nominally better and faster line.

If anyone would like to take a test of the 20 mbit vodafone and share the results it’s possible to join this speed wave

UPDATE: on Friday afternoon (October 19th) the line drown in the black lagoon altogether.
No ADSL and no voice at all for about 30 minutes.

UPDATE: on Saturday evening (November 17th) no ADSL again. Vodafone’s reliability is way worse than what I get with Wind/Infostrada.
To make things worse it’s not possible for the end-user to tell to the Vodafone Station to connect at a lower speed in an attempt to improve reliability.