Please don't send Season's Greetings cards !

If there's something that I don't really like in this time of the year, that's Season's Greetings.
I discovered this kind of wording when I was living in U.K. in 2006 at my friend John's place. As Christmas was approaching, a number of Season's Greetings cards started dropping in our mailbox, and at first I was quite puzzled as in Italy you always and only say Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and you never wish just Whatever you like in the winter season.
Then I understood that there may be several possible reasons behind this wording (and that I wasn't the only literary geek as usual) going from being religiously correct towards the ones don't share your creed to just selling more greeting cards to corporates.
Nevertheless, as usual my conclusion is that I didn't change my mind, and that I still dislike Season's Greetings, because if it wasn't Christmas, we'd hardly wish anything at all.
So please don't send any Season's Greetings card, or at least do not send it to me!
I hope you're still in time...

The battle against advertising

I hate advertising invasion. My personal battle will be about mocking it.
Period.
(click on picture to enlarge)

The plutonomy report that broke the umbrella

My father and me are just back home from cinema after watching "Capitalism: a love story" by Michael Moore.
While we're suggesting everyone of you to go watch it, let me quote down a paragraph I've found on a report that is named in the movie (and that you can open by clicking on the links below).

"Oil and the Consumer: We have heard constantly that oil will slow consumption down as it eats into disposable income. But it remains a conundrum to many that consumption has remained robust, despite oil prices remaining high. What’s going on? We don’t see a conundrum. [...] In the "plutonomy" countries, the rich are such a massive part of the economy, that their relative insensitivity to rising oil prices makes US$60 oil something of an irrelevance. For the poorest in society, high gas and petrol prices are a problem. But while they are many in number, they are few in spending power, and their economic influence is just not important enough to offset the economic confidence, well-being and spending of the rich."

In 2004 the top 10% of Americans got 43% of total income and were holding 57% of total wealth (2.5 million dollars a head on average); the bottom 40% of Americans were getting 10% of total income and held 9% of total wealth (on average 97,000 dollars a head). This huge disparity that is so widespread in the Anglo-Saxon world and its consequences over economy, society and politics are said to be arguably called plutonomy.

Citigroup Oct 16, 2005 Plutonomy Report Part 1
Citigroup Mar 5 2006 Plutonomy Report Part 2

How to delete your facebook account

Here we are.
After I never actively used facebook but simply accepted sporadic friendship invitations, finally I've found the way to delete permanently my account and my extremely valuable piece of information: name, last name, date of birth.
Now I feel muuuch safer.

If you want to do the same, just follow the instructions HERE and then go on enjoying the real life!

The Prize to the intentions

The Nobel Prize 2009 was recently presented to Barack Obama "for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples".
Frankly speaking, I like this guy, but I believe that a prize like this should only be awarded at the end of a long and effective career, rather than on the basis of many good intentions and speeches only.
And how not to consider that the U.S. are still at war?

Nobel Prize 2009

Cubicles - 1

If you want to have an idea of how American cubicles look like...

Mambo

I'm a little dog with no name.
Nor I have a house or an owner to take care of.
I live in the streets, do not eat regularly and do not have anybody who brings me around for a walk and talks to me.

I'm alone.

Tonight it's warm, and as usual I'm hungry and wandering about in search of food.
A bit far from me I see some young persons, but I go on walking and do not care. Now I'm passing in front of their feet and...
Ehi, ehi, why are you lifting me? I don't know who you are! Put me down, let me go!
Damn, you don't understand my language?
Ehi, ehi, what's this smell? Ehi, stop soaking me with that stinking junk, I'm cold! Ehi, wait, wait... what's that little light? ...
AAAAHHHHH AHII AHIIII CAIIIIIII ! ! ! IT BURNS, I AM BURNNIINGGG! ! ! AHHIIIIAAAAA CAAIIICAIIIII... RUN RUN FAST ROLL AND RUN AGAIN, IT BURNSSS IT DOESN'T STOP BURNIIING ! ! ! AHIII AHIIII I'M CRYINNGG GNNNN GNNNN AHHHIIII AHHIIII I'M CRYING.. .. . .

_________________________________________________

This is the story of Mambo, a little lovely dog who was burned "for fun" by two bastards in Espira-de-l'Agly (French Pyrenees).
Mambo risked to die, but luckily he was helped in time by a passer-by.
Later the two were arrested, one went immediately to trial and now will spend some time in prison. The other is underage and will be prosecuted at a juvenile court in December.

Personally, I deeply hate them.

But I love Mambo and wish him all the best!

To read his full story:
Original article on Corriere.it in Italian
Original article on Corriere.it translated in English

Odio i lunedì

Dedicated to the ones who hate mondays.
by Banksy

The business of fear

Two interesting articles on the Economist tell how firearm sales were never so good in the US.

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13788623&source=most_commented

http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13788631&source=hptextfeature

Don't follow your dreams

I didn't know TED nor Mike Rowe until few minutes ago.
A very nice discovery, indeed.
Enjoy watching this interesting speech.
Take care,
Nic

Silence

In the latest weeks I've had zero inspiration, so I decided not to write instead of writing for the sake of writing.
I don't know what it is, if it's the spring, or the months that run so fast, or more probably this town, or simply different priorities that reverberate in my head.
And one of these priorities is the urge of change, and I know it's only me the one who can make this change happen.
I know, this is a common feeling and would like to ask out "BUT HOW?", but for sure there's no answer outside. Then...

Tocca a te

Non mi sembra vero, it doesn't sound true!
For the ones who still didn't see the advertisement on the newspapers I want to tell about this new initiative by Telecom Italia also if to be fully honest I never liked this company, the former SIP, just because it used to be the telephone giant that for decades didn't let us have any choice in the supply of phone services.

But this time I'm really happy for the "Tocca a te", and I urge everyone of you to have a look at it and to propose some ideas.

Okay, one step back: what is it all about?
After only 10 years we Italians realized not to have any important internet company. Certainly there are a number of reasons, but in my opinion the main one is about the higher difficulty, comparing with America, of translating a good idea into a good company. So Telecom Italia hoped that the problem is not the lack of ideas (I guess they are right!) and decided to make lots of resources available to all the people who will be able to submit a convincing business plan for a 2.0 internet company.

Come on, don't waste this chance!

www.workingcapital.telecomitalia.it

9 years before I was born

"Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage.
It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them.
It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl.
It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities.
It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.
Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials.
It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile."

Robert Kennedy - Speech given at the Kansas University on March 18th 1968

Italianish, a business language for the new century

This writing is dedicated to three intersecting groups of people:
- the ones who do not live in Italy
- the ones who are not familiar with the Italian language
- the ones who don't know how people speak in the Italian offices of an international company.

My apologizes for those lucky or unlucky ones who do not belong to any of these groups, but the world needs to know what I'm about to say.

An interesting phenomenon that is happening in Italy, and what I very rarely hear talking about, is a shift of the Italian language towards the top global English.
Disgusting enough for any language purist this is not even a linear shift, but a shift with a curl at the end, not surprisingly if you mind our unique Italian sensitivity for arts and beauty.

Let me explain...

Fact 1: if you are in an international business you will spend a good deal of time speaking bizEnglish, and if you are not an English mother-tongue you will certainly need to make an effort to keep your mother-dictionary up to date.
I mean, if you start talking of brand, assets, advertising, positioning, training, pollution, low cost, value for money, "think out of the box", brainstorming, social media, etc. these English words will pop in your mind much faster than their Italian equivalent also when you will be speaking Italian.

Consequence of fact 1) When the above happens you basically have a double choice:
Choice 1.1) You make an extra mental effort not to use any English word and always stay stuck to Italian using the correct equivalent word (which I think is best)
Choice 1.2) Your become a victim of your laziness and surrender to the temptation of using the English words into the Italian talk.

Consequence of choice 1.1) You feel good and nowadays even a bit proud of yourself.
Consequence of choice 1.2) You try to redeem yourself by Italianizing the English words adding the Italian curl at the end, or -are, -ere and -ire (the standard endings for every Italian verb).

One example is clearer than a thousand words:

The English "clean" in Italian is "pulire", but in Italianish it becomes "cleanare".
The English "deliver" in Italian is "consegnare", but in Italianish it becomes "deliverare".
The English "split" in Italian is "dividere", but in the new Italianish is "splittare", and so on with other monsters like
screenare
matchare
trainizzare
smsare
customizzare
budgettare
linkare
schedulare
drivare
mailare
matchare
and the arrogantly creative STARTARE.

Happy new century, my ol' Italian tongue!

The jam boy

My latest discovery is a very happy one: Fraser Doherty, the 19 years old from Edimburgh.

At the age of 14 the boy received a jam recipe from his grand mother and then pushed by his passion started making jam for selling to his neighbors and shortly after to the local markets.

His popularity grew quickly, but then he realized that there was an emerging demand for healthier spreads and so he switched the production to so called super fruits like cranberries and blueberries and decided to replace sugar with grape juice.

Then one day he met a buyer from Waitrose and the rocket left the launch pad: a serious production site was found, designers made a beautiful label and the contract to supply hundreds of shops was signed.

Finally, thanks to the internet and blogging a new community is raising around the jam jar, recently with old lady knitters making covers for the children of the third world.

:-) What an inspiring example of YOUNG SOCIAL BUSINESS...

www.superjam.co.uk

Some simple thoughts about photography

Somewhere in Austria near Innsbruck with Sara and Gioia, January 3rd 2009


Photography consists in reproducing the instant of a live and tridimensional scene in a permanent manner on a physical support or temporary on some sort of screen.

Taking a picture is only one of the many possibilities to tell a place, an event, a person, and I think that while doing so one should also remember the alternatives: using voice, writing, drawing, filming.

There are a number of techniques that can be used to photograph, but the question that interests me the most is: why do we do it?
I think that the answer is not a unique one, but that it depends on people and moments.

Once upon a time photography was complex and costly, and its most frequent usage was for portraiture. It is also said that many bad painters of the time converted themselves to photography. Then, as cameras evolved, exterior and faster shooting grew easier, and so photography started to be used to record events of public interest.
Shortly after a further simplification and economization of the processes left room for the real demochratization of the photographic tool, and so the importance of the events to record shifted from collective to individual again.

Today, thanks to the gratuitousness and immediacy of the digital shot, we probably got to the point where we don't ask ourselves anymore why to photograph. Every tremor, every minimal sign is sufficient to make us press the button, and so our lives get clogged up with always more useless images, as if the higher number of photographs would testify our greater amusement.

I don't want to pass any judgments but rather think that everyone is free to do what he wants, and also think that by stopping for a while everyone would be able to look into his heart and understand the reason for each single photo of his.

It took me a loot of time to understand these reasons, and I will not tell you the whole truth. I will limit myself to say that the reasons behind the vast majority of the photographs I take when I'm alone are:
- showing the situation to someone who isn't there
- creating an intriguig image that I'd like to put on a wall as an ornament
- illuding myself to be able to bring home a little piece of the place I visited
- help myself to remember

Also, it's a little while that I became convinced that photography must be only one of the possible tools, and not a toy to kill time or give oneself a task.

But I say it once again: this is not the whole truth, also because part of it is still elusive to myself.

And I leave you with a promise: I'm working on my new internet site where more than a single media will be used and categories will be replaced by stories.

Happy new year,

Nic