quanti..

Cucchiaini di zucchero mette Gigi Proietti nel suo caffe' nel video del post precedente ?

FF.SS

Since we had to settle a few things for the wed, Jen and I decided to take a ride by the night train to Reggio Calabria (RC). I generally book a two bed compartment on the Wagon lit (T2), so Jen has generally had a relative good impression about trains in Italy....that was until last week-end. Since the T2 were sold out, worst than a U2 concert in the late 80's, I booked two beds on a "ordinary" 4 beds car, called cuccetta. There is honestly not that much difference on the beds, between the T2 and the Cuccetta, i can really do without the awful cappuccino in the morning or the Gazzetta del Sud (with local news from Vibo Valentia, which i really don't care about). What's the difference then ? Growing older, I am becoming a little more aware of schedules, so i got at the train station at 10:30 pm, whereas the train leaves at 11:10 pm. We did make the last metro train to the train station barely, running to the metro station. I just say this because Rome in the last week has been scorching hot and any step weighs as if you are carrying the marine's backpack, with the boots of the 1945 Red Army. So at 10:35 the train is on the sidewalk and we get on. It is an Espresso train, well it is what it sounds like.. a coffee machine. The cuccettista (that is the guy in charge of these sleeping-cars) is from RC (I am too). Now the 4 bed cars are nothing more than a 6 bed cars, from which two beds are not used. I really mean that. Indeed there are two beds just not turned to be used. As soon as we get on the train we start sweating like mad horses, there is no freaking air conditioning on and it feels like there is 40 C out! That is not surprising, the train is not running and so it is normal. In the wait, you can't notice that the sits are quite dirty and there is an awful smell coming from the toilettes and we haven't yet left the station. It's 11:20 pm the train finally leaves the station. The air conditioning will be on soon! ....12:00 pm the air conditioning is not yet on. The woman of the couple who is sharing with us the compartment is feeling sick. She is pregnant ! The cuccettista finally arrives and we start discussing. So why the AC is not on ? well, you know, he says, because everybody is hanging with their heads outside with the windows open !! Sure, we reply, we could melt if you like ! The AC cannot be on if the windows are open and I can't force anybody to shut the windows. We tell him that we are close to boiling temperature and that we even saw climbing out of the womb, the little kid of the pregnant woman asking for "MERCY" !!. Finally at around 1am and after finishing all the names you can call somebody with, the AC is on ! we can start sleeping. At 5 am, there is a problem on the engine car. The train stops and the AC is off again !! I am sweating like a pig, but i keep still. After half an hour the train is moving again, the AC is off for goods at 6:30 am. We get at the arrival station at 8 (30 minutes late, but that's ok). I am just at the beginning of a long day and I already look like a zombie. I have meetings at 10am to 1pm. At 3pm till 6:30 and at 7:30 till 8:30...I sleep within breaks and manage to stay alive without killing anybody. Left this morning at 10am to Rome. Finally relaxing. Tonight there is the European football final. I am soooo ready to enjoy it BY MYSELF !

No No and more no(s)...

Recently in Italy there has been the big gathering of the Italian Episcopal Conference (CEI), where Cardinal Bagnasco talked about Eugenics. The reason was that Livia Turco, our ex Health Minister, modified the guidelines on the Italian Law 40, which, among other things, regulates "assisted hatching". On this regard, she claims, the guidelines settle a problem which needed to be clarified, that is, the possibility of diagnosis on the embryos before they are "implanted" in the womb. Basically that means that the couple can ask the doctor to run some tests beforehand in order to see whether there are genetical problems on the embryo. Catholic Church (sooner or later I will post something on its "new" path), with Cardinal Bagnasco, states that such a choice " brings objectively the risk to promote a eugenic mentality, which is not acceptable". Now, in my opinion, although there is a clear selection which is made among embryos, there is no clear evidence of eugenics in these guidelines. A proof of the awareness on the consequences that such a choice can lead to, is in the ex minister suggestion that a definition of eugenics should be determined by law, indeed. Let me ask a simple question. What about a couple carrying genetical pathologies ? Is this a case of eugenics ? would the possibility of choice preserve the health (also psychological) of the mother and as a consequence of the family ?
To me, when this is not done to meet some standards, blonde vs dark hair, or to establish some kind of "superiority" of a race, law should be flexible, to some extent..but i believe it is an interesting question, also for those, like me, who deeply believe in a secular State.

Pride..

I really don't like self-celebrations, but i have one of those rare moments of sheer pride from this referee report of one of my papers, which you may find on the archive.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
Report of Referee A -- LS11794/Gaudio
----------------------------------------------------------------------

I find this theoretical discussion of the experiments on nonclassical
rotation in solid helium interesting and suggestive. It raises
questions and poses solutions to problems of sufficiently wide
interest to justify publication in Physical Review Letters, unlike
most of the papers I am sent to review for you.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

The reason is very simple. This is for me a completely new subject and it has been tough to find something relevant to say on it. But it is not that much the fact that he agrees on publishing it on PRL rather is the last sentence which made me laugh really really a lot ! I am just wondering who he is. I don't think it is common for a referee to reply in this way to the Editor of PRL, i guess he is a big shot..

" Italian Democratic Party Family picture"

This picture , with this caption, appeared on Left Wing and had me smiling for a second. On the sidebar article, though, Guia Soncini writes : "The first time I heard this story of youngsters who should take charge and save the situation because look at how Italy has been mishandled, I was young. The funny thing is that they were young too. Perhaps one day will tell our nephews:" You know, kid, there was a time when youngsters were young". I was tipped the first time when Mario Adinolfi stopped talking about "under something" (i don't mean 30s but at least 40s), and started talking of "born in the seventies". If all this were not pitiful, it would be funny. In any case, I am not going to give up, at least, until i am able to sit without too much pain

ps Left Wing has also an english section.

che tristez...post in italiano per ovvie ragioni..

E' da ieri che si discute sul Lodo Schifani. Mi sta venendo l'angoscia, al solo pensiero, non tanto perche' Berlusconi lo presenta in parlamento, quanto perche' c'e' l'appoggio del PD ! VELTRONI, CHE CAZZO T'HANNO PROMESSO ??? se dovesse succedere strappo la tessera del PD !

Big Brother.. a blog version.

Being new to this blog thing, I don't know exactly what happens with the other stats counters. I am just quite impressed with mine. It doesn't show just the hit counter, but it also show the spatial coodinates of the person who actually was connected, in terms of Lat and Long..
This is an example of what this thing can do.. i can have also a map and hided the IP address.
I mean, that's f%^&ing scary for God's sake !!

[<<] [>>]
Domain Name kuleuven.be ? (Belgium)
IP Address xxxxxxxxxxxx (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven)
ISP Katholieke Universiteit Leuven
Location
Continent : Europe
Country : Belgium (Facts)
State/Region : Vlaams-Brabant
City : Leuven
Lat/Long : 50.8833, 4.7 (Map)
Language English (U.S.)
en-us
Operating System Macintosh MacOSX
Browser Firefox 3.0
Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; PPC Mac OS X 10.4; en-US; rv:1.9) Gecko/2008061004 Firefox/3.0
Javascript version 1.5
Monitor
Resolution : 1024 x 768
Color Depth : 24 bits
Time of Visit Jun 23 2008 3:45:28 pm
Last Page View Jun 23 2008 3:45:28 pm
Visit Length 0 seconds
Page Views 1
Referring URL http://phpplasma.blogspot.com/
Visit Entry Page http://sgaudio.blogspot.com/
Visit Exit Page http://sgaudio.blogspot.com/
Out Click
Time Zone UTC-6:00
Visitor's Time Jun 23 2008 8:45:28 am
Visit Number 125

Wanders..

Living in a big city poses serious problems, at least for me coming from a small village in the south of Italy. Rome, the city where I live, is somewhat human, since it has quarters which really look like small villages. Despite this, it's ferocious with its traffic and chaos and definitely one has to plan more carefully his own time. If you are down in a big city you won't find relief in somebody's else face, as for instance it happened to me many times in New Mexico, although Rome offers long walks through the ruins which are really cathartic. I guess I have to get used to a new pace and a new lifestyle.

Perhaps,what I am wondering is why I miss so much the US, actually the South-West, and I don't have a clear answer in my mind. It could be the coffee shops or the groceries open late or it could just be the diversity, which Italy is not even ready for. Or maybe the open-mind(ness). Sometimes I just think it's the feeling of being abroad, that mix of discovering a place which is not your home and the nostalgia for your own country. Maybe the "hi" for no reason of people i've never met before or maybe it's the open spaces in NM, with nothing around,the sun shining on the mountains clayish wall, the sense of freedom driving through infinite roads or rolling down the car windows and shout the hell out of my lungs. It is what it is, maybe just a place which gave me peace..

let me tell you pal...

Minds, like parachutes, work better when open.. i can't stop smiling at this.

amazing..

I was looking for something about a paper on google and I came across this fantastic video. From time to time, I am reminded why i like physics so much. I hope you'll enjoy it..

follow up..

From a revelation of the sharp Markidis here, I am posting an emblematic picture appeared, today, at the Italian Senate....

CVD

ovvero Come Volevasi Dimostrare (post Italia-Olanda)..Les Italiens !! C'era un vecchio spot Palcolor Telefunken (ma esiste ancora ???) con un tipo che usciva con gli occhiali specchiati e diceva:" Avremmo potuto stupirvi con effetti speciali, ma noi siamo scienza non fantascienza!" .. e che Dio ce la mandi buona, con la Spagna !

Paz..

In these weeks, there is in Rome an exhibit dedicated to Andrea Pazienza. For those who don't know him, Paz was a "comics" writer. The quotes are due to the fact that defining his drawings and stories as comics doesn't really make justice to his talent. I actually saw something by him, for the first time, in 89 through a friend in Pisa. He was found dead more or less a year earlier. His stories and characters were diverse, complex and psychological at times, his irony very cinical. How would this strip sound today ?

nota musicale

After so many years abroad, one loses completely the feeling of what happens in his own country..

For instance, I am totally out of touch of how music has evolved in Italy. I just discovered Bugo !

The song through which i approached this guy is C'e' Crisi  (We are in a crisis). Now, I am not going to analyze the song, but at least, after all the howls and crows, there is somebody that still takes life easy and is ironic about it. I must say all other songs of this guy are strikingly different from this one, in terms of genre and style, but this particular one makes me happy listening to it and that's enough for me

The devil and the holy water....

I am getting married on sept 6th this year. Although we already had the civil ceremony for burocratic reasons, so Jen can safely stay in Italy, we will do by that day also the "official" religious wedding, so, finally, there will be somebody from her family present. I am catholic and Jen is protestant, although none of us is really into religion.  In any event, for the catholic wed, one has to attend some classes where you are supposed to learn what actually means getting married as a Catholic. So this has been going on w every Friday for the last month and a half and we finished today. Honestly I have not been in a mass in quite a long time, years, I would say.  Let me put it in this way. I am a physicist and Jen is a protestant. We were not exactly seen as the perfect "catholic"  couple. On the other hand, there were other three couples. One was basically raised at the oratory, a second one whose groom seemed the xerox copy of the little kid seated at the first bench everybody has at the elementary school. The other couple was around only for a couple of weeks. In any case, we were the couple to redeem. Every week a different topic was discussed, from our role in the Church and of the Church in our lives, to bioethical issues.  I must say some meeting were interesting, some others were intolerably boring, mostly because at the end of the week at 9 pm I am not exactly ready for more classes.  On the other hand, entering a Church has always had a soothing effect on me and these hours forced me to think again about what is the meaning of my God. I deeply feel something religious in me, although being a physicist, I am extremely critical. I don't know if because of this course I will attend mass again, definitely it strucked a cord with me. At least I met a nice couple, I can go and have a drink with,  in a tough city. 

Berlusconi's tip tap

There is an interesting debate right now in Italy. No, it's not about Berlusconi dancing, but about tapping. 

In my country, this procedure has become ordinary in typical investigations. I guess it comes down to our natural genetical...laziness. Why should we waste a lot of time in useless research and analysis, busting our asses when we can stay with our earphones, seat somewhere and wait for things to happen ? In Italy, the amount of calls taped are of the order of 125000. That's huge!

The problem is not in the figures, as much as,  how it happens everywhere, info leak out and thus people, who might not even be investigated, end up on the cover page of newspapers and magazines, generally for facts which are not relevant to the charges. Why ?? Because people crave for somebody else misbehavior and like to point and judge everything with the hypocrisy of the just or maybe, simply because of our hunger for gossip. Whatever the reason, many people's lives have been smashed by this  and I believe it is correct to stop and think about it. I remember, in the US, the scandal opened by consequences of the Patriot Act when it was discovered that it was misused. Number of taps is very different, at least on paper, from what we are talking about here, despite there is a order of magnitude difference between the two populations. This is just to give a sense of how big the phenomenon is in Italy.

Now, what is the solution proposed by Berlusconi ? At least, as far as the public statements go (there is no text being presented at the moment),  in order to tap anybody, the charges the person is supposed to have committed should lead to 10 years in prison. This is an idiotic way to "solve" the problem. First of all, charges like Corruption (I remind the readers that this is one the charges for which Berlusconi has been mostly suited for) for instance are not included in this and corruption is something which big Crime organizations use as a normal tool to do what they like. Corruption, again, was the main charge for the big turmoil caused by what is known in Italy as "Tangentopoli", that is the Nation largest scandal in Public Administration. Secondly, tapping is useful because many much bigger crimes were discovered through tapping for completely different reasons. Thus, it just makes no sense whatsoever to take away from the investigators' hands one of their main tools. If this is the new sense of safety  Berlusconi wants to give, he has had a good start. To put things in order again, it would be simply necessary to prohibit publication until the actual trial starts and in any case of irrelevant info which might involve the private life of third parties, who have no part in the charges. 

Squeezing the Orange...

Some of you may know that the European Championship is going on. In Italy, as in Spain, Football (or soccer for the americans), is a religion, a faith that goes beyond any sort of rationale. You can kid about Catholicism in Italy, but you've really got to be careful at what you say about football. So, yesterday there was the first game of our National Team, Italy for those who don't know and  I had some friends home. We prepared a great meal.  Together with them, also all the acronyms  were present, LCD TV, HD, PAL. All the elements were there for a really good game. We really prepared the event well. So we all thought we had done our duty. Now it was the time of our Team. We are one of the favorite team to win. We are the WORLD CHAMPION, the idtiot says on TV... WHAT ???????? This doesn't sound good. I am  not prepared for this !! Italy is not prepared for this. We have always won when we were the underdog, we never won when we were the best. This role is not for Italians. We need to be bashed, severely humiliated, we need to know how pitiful we are and then we might win, but being the best ?! No, guys, that's not for us. That's why we have the best moms in the world. That's why we get the hell out of the house at the age of 40 !  This does not sound good at all !

So all the damn journalists started busting our balls on how good we are, saying that everybody fears us and talked about something that happened in 1960something, with celebrations of Rivera, Mazzola. This does not sound good at all...but the adrenaline starts pumping. You should know I generally don't watch a game seated, I just can't. In any event, it's time for history.

 We saw our heros stepping on the field, with the eyes of those who knew they were the World Champions, with the eyes of those who, you can say, know that they can beat anybody. Today it's going to be Holland turn. Sorry guys, you suck, we are the World Champions !

The team started with some idiotic choices (!), which we did not know until the very end.  Just to sum up, AC Milan finished the italian tournament only 5th or sixth, but Donadoni thinks that the midfielders have to be from AC Milan, that one of the key roles in the central defense have to be played by Barzagli, who played for the Palermo football team and has a huge negative record of goals, the right hand side of our defense is given to Panucci, who was known to be NOT in good shape. It really doesn't sound good at all !

Despite all, we start decently, but with some awful misses by our defense ! At some point, Panucci dies, for no clear reason, and it's outside the field close by our goal. The Oranges find a deflection  which ends up behind our Goalie, Buffon, by one of them in clear off-side, unless the referee can consider a guy with his hands on his eyes, laying down in horizontal position on the grass, screaming from pain while dictating his last wills, actively participating to the game. But believe it or not, that's exactly what happens. So we try to recover, but while we do that, six minute later, our defense decides that it's time for a drink and so with a quick run the Dutch are on our side of the pitch. Di Natale, our striker, that is the guy who scores and as a consequence doesn't know how to defend is the only person against one of the Orange, who scores in a breeze ! Game over ! Now we are the underdog again. If that was what we aimed at, well guys, excellent job ! 

ps  there was a third goal by the Oranges, but I leave it to the Chronicles...

 

a blog?!

Well ok, i have thought about this for quite a bit. Eventually, i gave up as well. I have got to have a blog.

I have been quite a bit around in my life and, each time, i have been lucky enough to meet great people and make new good friends. Have you ever thought about how many people you have met in your life ? Do you ever wonder what happened to them ? Call me sentimental, but it is quite disturbing to me, the simple fact that i have to lose contact with most of them. It is true, most of the people just pass by your door and say hi and that is all what is left of them in you, but what about the faces, the jokes, the life you have lived with those who dared to walk through the door and spent some time with you ? Why am i supposed to forget them or be condemned not to see them again or not to feel them as part of my life any longer ?  After all, memories, feelings, smells, I have shared them with somebody most of the times, and would be meaningless without the people who were with me. That feeling of nostalgia is priceless and it is not just the past, it's your soul. And I don't want to lose it. I am just a simple man.