Primo Levi’s Suicide
Saturday, November 3rd, 2007I stumbled across this fascinating article (thanks to a posting on Chet Raymo’s excellent Science Musings blog. It’s an old article, but was news to this monkey. I had always presumed that it was accepted fact that Primo Levi had committed suicide. Virtually every mention of the celebrated Italian chemist/author/holocaust survivor ends noting that Levi [...]
How justice works under Prodi’s Government
Sunday, October 21st, 2007You have to feel sorry for Silvio. While he was in government the European media went to town detailing his every infringement of the democratic norms (of which there were plenty). Since Romano Prodi has been in power scarcely a whimper – for example, how many people outside of Italy know that the current Prime [...]
Beppe Grillo’s V-day
Monday, September 10th, 2007The disjuncture between what goes on and what is reported has rarely been so apparent. On Saturday, with little-to-no advance television publicity, an initiative got under way in Piazzas throughout Italy. The initiative was to collect signatures to propose a new law with three main clauses: 1) No-one fully convicted of a crime should be [...]
Statistics
Monday, September 10th, 2007Blaming the opinion pollsters (see earlier entry) is usually the resort of the washed-up but sometimes you have to wonder. In this weekend’s Gazeta Wyborcza there are two articles concerning, among other things, mobile phones. Side by side they sit, contradicting each other. Polling agaency CBOS tells us that in a random sample of 903 [...]
The Perfect Spy
Friday, September 7th, 2007There’s an interesting short piece in this week’s Polityka, which I have started reading again on account of how they seem to know what the government/state prosecution office is going to do – and to whom – a week or two in advance of events. Because of a shortage of recruits to the intelligence services, [...]
They’d do better to remain silent
Friday, August 31st, 2007Global 24hr news stations, well-resourced and able to bring us in-depth, live coverage of epoch defining moments. Italy, like many other countries, has had its news media shaken ever so slightly over the last couple of years with the introduction of 24hr news channels. Rai 24, the news flag-ship of state broadcaster specialises in developing [...]
Apologies…
Thursday, July 5th, 2007… for the failure to post any of the deluge of comments over the last few months. This was due to a combination of spam and technical incompetence: in blocking spam to one post I somehow disabled all commenting. Your comments are now up on the relevant pages but I’ll post a few replies of [...]
Reza Aslan on Uncle Sam’s efforts to integrate Europe
Tuesday, July 3rd, 2007I stumbled upon an interesting dialogue on Bloggingheads.tv between Bruce Feiler and Reza Aslan, author of No God But God (and, apparently, the Brad Pitt of young Muslim commentators…). It’s a lengthy interview, throwing up some interesting points as the two talk about the Iranian community in America, and the political state of play in [...]
The Madonna Cries Sperm – Public Culture & Offense
Tuesday, June 19th, 2007An art exhibit, entitled the Madonna Cries Sperm, is causing political representatives on a local and national level to get hot under the collar. The exhibit, originally organised by the Yurta association as part of the S.Vitale neighbourhood summer festival, has been cancelled after various local and national politicians deemed it ‘unacceptable’ and ‘offensive’. It’s [...]
Mario Monicelli’s Le Rose nel Deserto
Thursday, June 14th, 2007Last night I managed to get around to seeing Le Rose nel Deserto, the latest film directed by Mario Monicelli. Monicelli’s career spans the history of Italian cinema, having made his first film back in 1934. Monicelli directed Le Rose nel Deserto, on location in the Libyan desert in 2005, an admirable feat in itself, [...]
