Religion can be a good thing...

I always knew it. Being born in a catholic country (the catholic country for excellence, one could say), I know that people can have a positive attitude towards the environment, not the disastrous one that theo-con evangelical have in the US. But it's nice to see someone over there pulling his weight...

Over the last five years, Father Morris has sharply reduced his small parish’s energy use and emissions of carbon dioxide, the compound most scientists believe has led to global warming, and he has organized other congregations across Michigan to do the same.

that's good...

by the way, it's not like evangelical are all EVIL:

Over the last year, religious activism on global warming has won much attention. Last February, 86 evangelical Christian leaders backed an initiative to combat global warming, a move that broke the evangelical movement’s broad silence on the issue but exposed stark divisions.

that's what the priest teaches: “If we are made in his image, we should mirror his image in our dominion over the Earth,” Mr. Wickersham said. “He is creative and sustaining, not destructive.”

it's a neat and convincing message I'd say, one that certainly can appeal to people who have a good hearth and care about their own children. The other? well, quite frankly, I'd give them one last opportunity to redeem themself, then would have them shot. with bio-degradable bullets, of course :-)

And another blog to add...

to your favorites: Galactic interactions. very nice posts about cosmology and astronomy... haven't read much. unofrtunately, like all people trying to enlighten the masses, Rob Knop's blog is plagued by nuts convinced they've got it figured all, and science establishment is covering all up. But he and his blogs' habitues put up a good fight against the dark side...

First steps in acknowledging Virtual Spaces

Reuters is opening his first news agency in a virtual space: namely, the MMORPG Second Life. Being there almost one million inhabitants, it was almost time, you could say. The articles Mr. Pasick files will be strictly about — and addressed to — Second World players. Reuters CEO downplays this all to a playful touch of PR, but I see it differently. With the growing importance of Virtual Arenas, more and more will be happening there, especially when information exchange is concerned... One days, things will be decided up there that will exert an effect in the real space. Think of it has the Internet Special Interest Groups that Bruce Sterling protrayed in "Island in the net". Behold the future in making!

EDIT: next steps, is a daily news on what's been happening on World Of Warcraft...

eBooks: will it work this time?

I have an e-book reader. it's a java thingy in my cell phone. never used it. the screen is tiny, and even if it weren't, in which occasions I'd enjoy a book, without having the opportunity to have the book physically there?

moreover, screens are awful for reading. Sony is trying to shake this up with its next big thing (well, they hope so)


It’s a handsome half-inch-thick nine-ounce slab, a bit smaller than 5 inches by 7 inches, “bound” in a protective leatherette cover. You can turn pages individually, or jump ahead 10 percent of the book at a time. A “mark” button produces a visual dog-ear on the page corner.

What distinguishes Sony’s effort from all the failed e-book readers of years gone by, however, is the screen.

The Reader employs a remarkable new display technology from a company called E Ink. Sandwiched between layers of plastic film are millions of transparent, nearly microscopic liquid-filled spheres. White and black particles float inside them, as though inside the world’s tiniest snow globes. Depending on how the electrical charge is applied to the plastic film, either the black or white particles rise to the top of the little spheres, forming crisp patterns of black and white.

let's hope it will work this time. and let's also hope that prices for downloads will not be exceedingly high. I laugh at people buying iTunes songs. I want part of the money saved in not having to print the stuff to be shifted onto me. not only in more money for the freaking shareholders. pah! Until then, I'll happily do without e-contents.

Welcome, alessandro...

I know you've visited... :-)

Early posting today...

Good morning everybody... I'm here at work at 6.40, as usual during my mondays. most people find it hard to wake up on mondays. me too, but when you've to throttle 100 busy Km of motorways to get here you better start early. and when as today it's not me the one who has to travel, I still hve to bring her to the rail station. so, my wake up time doesn't change...

so, here I am... at least this way I'll be able (hope) to leave work early, and go off to the swimming pool to test my new swimsuite. Like children, I believe that new sport gear makes you perform better... I remember when I used to get new (albeit unbranded) trainer socks, and after trying them for like ten metres sprints, I would proudly declare to my mum that thanks to them I felt I was running faster, jumping higher, and longer... ah, childhood... when every dream comes true... may be I'll post some more about my childhood, in the following posts... who knows? for now, back to gritty day-to-day work.

49 Up

7 Up isn't just the brand of a fizzy lemonade, but also an interesting documentary created by some british lads, In 1964, they started following some people's lives at seven years intervals. They're now at the seventh instalment, and since 7x7=49, you can guess what the title refers to. I stumbled onto this documentary while looking for an underdog sport movie, but i think I'll keep a tab on it, and see if I can get my hands on it. It looks quite interesting...

I wonder, though, how much these people's life has been influenced by the documentaries... did people recognise them on the road? I don't think so. but may be having something like this in your CV can give you an edge. After all, the employer would be happy to keep you seven years, so that his firm would be featured in the movie too... mah?

anyway, click on the title to get the trailer (thanks Apple)

saturday morning fever...

Plenty of things to do today... wake up, shake up, abs, a bit of thesis writing, to the post-office to retrieve a fine (sigh), then lunch, down to bxl to meet the lady, and may be swimming. If I can get a swimsuit there. Also, I'm afraisd I'll have to help her to put up a computer-desktop... God of B&Q, bless me...

and, the fatter you are the more stupid too...

I always suspected it...

Neurology has published a paper where a correlation is shown between BMI and cognitive distress.

Now, the scatterplot which i see is dreadfull, and the line they draw through it not really significative. let's face it, the variability of the data is enormous. So, not having read the paper, I do have my doubts...

Also: as a sportsman, I do have a high BMI, but very low fat %age. how does this figure, then? Could this be cause of the variability? I would then expect to see some variability change along the years, may be?

thanks to Shelley for this.

Suing for being abducted by aliens?

No, really, I can't believe this...

BERLIN (Reuters) - A German lawyer hopes to drum up more business by pursuing state compensation claims for people who believe they were abducted by aliens.

"There's quite obviously demand for legal advice here," Jens Lorek told Reuters by telephone on Thursday. "The trouble is, people are afraid of making fools of themselves in court."

Lorek, a lawyer based in the eastern city of Dresden who specializes in social and labor law, said he hoped to expand his client base by taking on the unusual work.

He has yet to win any abduction claims, but says there are plenty of potential clients, noting that extra-terrestrial watchdogs report scores of alien assaults every year.

"These people could appeal for therapies or cures," he said.

Lorek, 41, is pinning his hopes for success on a German law which grants kidnap victims the right to state compensation.

I don't understand who they want to sue. The Local Air Force for not adequately protecting the country's air space? this is bonkers!!!

repeat with me. Bonkers!!!

Thanks to Orac

It's a slow friday...

And I spent it almost all in meeting, presentation and some work here and there. not much. now what? I'd like to go out, but my GF is 100Km apart. not much, pity is 100Km of queues, so I better try to reach her tomorrow morning... Freinds here have their families, is not like in the UK where everybody was single or unmarried anyway, with no ties and happy to go out... not that I got many occasions, entrenched as I was in my routine... pity that when you want, you can't, and the other way around...

well, that's life, I guess... :-|

let's see if I can put in some scrolling text

yes I can... that's cool...

Ghost Rider

Here's the new Marvel movie on the ghist Rider. Personally, I've never read the comic but I know of a few people who were fan of it. So I may give it a try. Although I'm a bit bored with the whole superhero concept right now.

ps: click the link for some hi-res trailers...

Judas Unchained isn't that bad, after all...

Some posts ago, i complained about Judas unchained sucking. I still am of the same general opinion, but the few pages I read yesterday nudged the score a bit higher... I particularly appreciated the dialogue between the two person heading the largest corporation/dinasty of them all, CST/Sheldon. Nigel Sheldon and Ozzie Isaacs are the two scientist who created the QWormhole technology, and CST is the result of this. a monopoly over Trains-through-Wormholes transports which actually makes up the Commonwealth. They did, however, choose different paths in their life: Nigel, practical and no-nonsense, heads the dinasty. Ozzie, on the other hand, is the classic rebel genius of SF, always aiming to be the eternal underdog. they tackle life in very different ways, and same is true for the Primes menace. The dialogue halfway the book when the two finally manage to re-unite is very interesting, and adult, on both sides. I wonder how time Hamilton spent in writing it, and ironing any crease out of it. It is one of the best dialogue I've ever read, where the two tackle the very essence of their friendship, the responsabilities which come from their positions, and the very values which are important to them. Only for this, I feel the book deserves to be read.

I'm still a bit skeptics over the whole Starflyer idea, and I glimpsed the solution to the whole shebang. Not particularly elegant, I'd say, but I was also parially dissatisfied by the resolution of events in the Confederation's books. Dear peter, it looks like you've a penchant for the Deus Ex Machina. You do introduce it since the very begin, true, but even so, it's a dishonest way to close a story. Anyway, i'll suspend my final judgement until I read the END word in the book.

ciao ciao.

Now, this is just wonderful...

The Mars reconnaissance Orbiter satellite flying over Mars has snapped up a picture of the Victoria crater just when Opportunity was on its edge (it'll try to descend to its bottom as soon as the earth-based pilots work out a safe way). The instrument used was the HiRISE.

The Picture is just awesome... down I've put a thumbnail. Click on the link to see a version were the position or the rover is annotated - click on the one below to get a huge 4045x5085 pixel version - you can actually see the rover in it!!! isn't that something?



It makes me feel mars as a living planet, with the blue-ish streaks on the upper part (caused by wind-blown dust?), and the cracked bottom, like a lake dried in the summer. but also an alien place, with big and small craters constituting the main terrain's feature...

I wish one day I'll get there... for the moment, I'll keep dreaming about it.

ps: thanks to John M. Lynch for letting me know about this.

Is Bush really christian?

Or does he just use his "christianity" to score political points? I always guessed that, but now we seem to have a confirm.

More than five years after President Bush created the Office of Faith-Based Initiatives, [David Kuo] the former second-in-command of that office is going public with an insider’s tell-all account that portrays an office used almost exclusively to win political points with both evangelical Christians and traditionally Democratic minorities.

I guess the same can be said about Berlusconi, devoted (and divorced) catholic... or almost any other politician, real or fictitious (The Saldana dinasty from Hamilton's Confederation books comes to my mind...)

North Korea and their new toy...

It's the most discussed news of the world in these days: north korea has apparently managed to detonate (or may be fizzle) a test nuclear device... may be, this article argues, they didn't need to do it. They've done it anyway. (duh!) Far from being justified by the need of gathering info, the experiment was a clear political message to the world. Was the message "Don't mess with us"? or was mor elike "Ehy look what we can do, how about giving us some more gifts? Otherwise we'll sell them to AlQaeda(or Hezbollah?) in bundle with our missiles"...

On the origin of dogs

I've cited Darren Naish quite often in here. His is one of my favourite blogs, although I did neglect to check it for quite a while (I had read everything he wrote until last month). Now, he's up with a nice new post on the (controversial) origin of dogs. Also, he's hit big time appearing on BBC news 24 (and world news) to comment about jurassic marine reptiles... Congratulations, Darren!!!

Use your hands!!!

A nice post on how to do math until 100 with your hands. a ten-fold improvement over what I could do until today, which was just counting up to ten...

I'm tempted to put myself down to practice it... if only i could justify it to my bosses as 'learning time'...

Yet again one otious after lunch post

don't have much to write about, so I'll post a small rant I jotted down today as soon as I arrived. It's supposedly written in the same style of the general announcement we receive from management and HR: it's a rant related to the fact that some smartasses at HR thought it was a nice idea to spend time and money on sending us a fake box of a nonexistent drugs, Smartolan, supposed to help us relive ethe stress of working here. A nice idea I'd appreciated much more, hadn't it been that in this times we are constantly reminded that there's no money for traveling around at conferences. But apparently there is enough in other departments to waste it around...

never mind, here it comes... I edited something to reduce the lawsuits risk...

Dear employee,

Ginseng Pharmaceutica NV is pleased to announce that their new treatment against acute idiocy has been approved by the regolatory authorities. Under the brand name of Smartolan, the product (3,6-idio,4-parastupid dudecaine) is expected to provide revenues in the order of 15 billion US$/year, mostly from sales to other corporate HR departments.

I don't have to remember how hard the development of this product has been. After initial identification of a likely target in 1955, upon hiring of the first HR manager here at Jansenn, in incredible amount of work has been poured in to alleviate these almost-human beings of their handicap. Initial tests on Guinea pigs and rats were promising, with a 50% improved IQ measured as time required to exit through a maze. A big hurdle to overcome for the project was the complete lack of effect of Smartolan on the next pre-clinical trial, Post-doctorate associates, notoriously cheap to hire, test and fire. this was most likely due to their particular physiology (the already high IQ may have played a role too). Fortunately, efficacy on more expensive lab animals such as Dogs and Monkeys was confirmed.

Clinical trial were performed, for the first time in the story of our company, in house, on a large subset of the HR department allegedly suffering of the affection. the resting part was kept as control in this innovative double blind. More than 85% of the person treated showed a 1.5-fold increase in IQ and general awareness, with the lower 30% actually reaching the level of sub-normal person (80>IQ>100). Unfortunately, a good 15% of the patients didn't show any answer to the drugs, a particular sub-population now called "Natural-born-HR" for which only gene therapy may provide help for the foreseeable future.

However, it is a glorious day for our company and we look at the possibility of using the new revenue stream not as input for more sterile scientific research, but to allow more generous travel allowances and possibly even company cars to HR secretaries who have until now been denied this staple of corporate employment.

Idiotically yours

Mark Van Stupiid (HR and PR director)

disclaimer: the author of this e-mail was involved in the Smartolan clinical trial and was found to be part of the unresponsive 15%.

ps: Guys don't fuck me up. This better NOT leave our machines ok? no forwarding, no showing around please. I could be fired for this.

I have seen it!!!

I managed yesterday to watch the first and second episode of BattleStar Galactica, season 3. and the short verions of this post is: It Rocks!

I mean, for being a TV series, it is becoming increasingly adult... It shows the human population oppressed by monotheistic robots which justify every thing they do with a higher call. It really strikes me as a very strong and decise criticism of the current middle-east politics of the US. And I'm frankly puzzled by the way some people see it the other way around.

The way they treat serious issues as suicide bombers and the reaction politcal and not to them is very very adult. And I like to see how every body does what it can to survive, how people are forced to make difficult choices...

and some characters are finally being fleshed out decently, until now I thought that Col. Tigh was there just as a negative example, a counterpoint to Adama. but not, his is the most poignant quote of this season so far: "Does it really matter whether the guy I command ride on a viper or starp themselves a belt of explosives? they're just as dead at the end." (I don't remember exactly right now, but more or less this is the sense.)

Plus, the acting is still good, for a TV series that is... the only gripe I have is with the scenery, if I had started colonising a planet, I would have expected a much sparse population, with a more agricultural setting. As it is, it looks like most people just hang around in tents day in day out, planning a rebellion... who produces the food? are they supported by cylon poop? or what? I don't think it would have been more expensive - they just had to hire some western series set-up, and they'd be done... but hey, they would then stomp on joss Whedon's feet and his wondrous Firefly/Serenity...

All in all, however, I heartily recommend this new season. Se Il buon giorno si vede dal mattino, it is going to be so damn good... can't wait... ;-)

StarBuck (the elder) does not agree...

Again on BSG: Dirk Benedict, aka "face" in the A-Team, but most importantly first person to incarnate Lt. StarBuck in the first series, does not like at all the change of sex his old character has been given in the 2003-to-date series. He says that something has been lost in castration... I personally, enjoy much more Katee Sackoff than him as Starbuck, as my mind simply can't see the Face onboard a Viper. I always expect to see a cigar smoking Hannibal Smith shouting with complacency: "Ah, adoro i piani ben riusciti!"

Luckily, someone else thinks it my way...

so, Go Starbuck!!! and Go Boomer!!! (certainly the most tender cylon around... I leave the sexyest's palm to Number Six)

ps: by the way, the article from dirk benedict certainly is very very well written, for me... he almost convinced me... almost. I still believe that the new starbuck is more suited for the new series. and this one is better than the old one tout court. except may be for the damned octagonal pieces of paper...

what am I doing?

it's after lunch time, so my brain is slowly recovering from the lack of blood. it all went down to the GI tract to help digest the substantious meal that Janssenn gladly subsidizes. Today, it was country omelette with herbs and bacon and (sic!) potatoes, a soup with something (plus chilly mush, my favourite addition) and two slices of country bread to pooch in it... finally, a cup of tea and a small apple almond and cream pie...

the morning I've been trying to finish off at least one of a two-parts work on IKs inhibitors. can't talk about the details, but after getting a series of hits from a software charged with finding molecules electrostatically similar to some nine known inhibitors, I'm regrouping said hits, and selecting only one-hundred molecules which hopefully will be diverse between them. let's hope so...

other than this, i decided to give up the car from now on, unless necessary. I bought a bus pass for the coming month, and in nice days I'll try to cycle as I have been trying to do in the summer. coming by car turns out to be very stressing, as either i come here very early, or I clash with huge traffic and parking difficulties. Coming by bus, someone else does the driving, I can sleep some more, and during the wait (just outside my apartment) and the fifteen minutes trip I can enjoy a good read. This way I can skip on reading at night, time which I can use more proficuously on my thesis. all in all, a pretty good deal for 25 euros/month. and the car is always there if I need it. that is, in the weekends or for heavy duty shopping :-)

Battlestar Galactica drives a lot of traffic

Just write down a post on BSG, and your counter will tick quicker, thanks to technorati and to the fact that people go there to see what people is saying, and where... useful to know... so, here's a useful piece of knowledge for you. now let's see if it works with this post... :-P

edit: no it doesn't... let's try tomorrow with a reasoned review of BattleStar Galactica season 3, episodes 1 and 2.

Google and YouTube

I've come to appreciate YouTube... at the begin, I did look at it as a good idea, but was half expecting people to misuse it. that is, I did fear it would be full of pr0n. but more and more people seem to be using it for useful purposes, from sharing short snippet of TV they particularly liked (didn't I post a link to the BMW M5 ads some time ago? yes I did), to self-adverstisement of natural photography.

Finally, some big player has noticed this little phenomenon, and has bought it. the big player is, as you may have guessed, Google, which seems to be looming over the internet as a sort of benignant Big Brother.

I do Love Picasa, and Gmail is my primary email now. I do write this on Google-owned blogspot. Google already had his own Video hosting service, I dopn't know much about the tech behind but youtube and gvideo seemed to be pretty similar.

In short, google seems to be aggregating all that makes the network a collaborative, bottom-to-top thing. Thanks god, I feared it may just become another TV with infinite channels. may be there's still hope...

the onlt Gthing I didn't keep on my HD is Gchat. I'm sorry google, there's way to go before you get close to Skype. at least that was the situation when I last checked.

Surf's Up

Lots of CGI animation movies coming up this season... and in between them it's the (first?) such feature from Sony: Surf's up. click on the title link to enjoy the retro story of a young penguin surfer trying to imitate his begone idol, Big Z!!! Trailer courtesy of apple.

it looks fun... let's see how it shapes up when it hits the silver screen...

ps: penguins seems to be more nad more favourite. Starting from Neon genesis Evangelion onward, I count more and more apparitions of them: Madagascar, plus the similar one from disney... and now Cold feet and this one... may be Linux is having an effect after all?

Children of men

Is it that good? The story doesn't look particularly original, to me... I have seen it in at least three books. And frankly, I'd rather have a cinema version of Darwin's Radio than this unknown to me mixed-genre book... However, people seems to be shocked at how beautiful this movie is... may be this new alfonso guy really nailed it?

funny though, how humanists change their opinion. if a sci-fi movie is good, then it can't be classed in sci-fi... ah ah... as if sci-fi was all like cinematographic sci-fi, all explosion and implausibility... quite the opposite, I'd say... good written sci-fi is hard core, realistic, and most of all gives your brain food for thought. Umpah!!!

uhm... seen the trailer, I don't know what to say... not yet convinced, but may give it a try...

Somewhere, somebody's blog just blew up...

Click on the link, and you'll see that the authors of South Park appreciate Battlestar Galactica too... :-)

They both (BSG and SP) won this "Peabody's Award". Me, I've never heard of it but I'm sure they both deserve it.

ps: the title refer to a comment made after the two guys came down from the podium... it's a joke but it shows how the information panorama is changing, thanks to the distributed network of blogs powering more and more the information exchange. a big difference from the early days of centralised top-to-bottom information diffusion through agencies. Specialised news agencies are certainly still important in some fields, but for the rest, their role is being severely undermined by the ease of access and pervasive presence of the network. (the interweb, as Clarkson calls it)

Judas Unchained sucks...

at least for the moment...

I've been reading this monumental piece by Peter F Hamilton, second part of the Commonwealth saga. I haven't finished it yet, and I'll probably get to the last page within one week or so, but the problem is that it's getting boring...

I fell however that I can already draw a judgement about the whole saga. Unless the next hundred pages get a decise improvement, my answer is that it sucks. And even if they were, i am afraid it may be too late. The real problems are not with the plot, but with the background. I mean, I can suspend my unbelief only for a certain amount... Ok we have a world-scene very different from what we saw in the confederation books. In the confederation, starships were connecting the various planets. In this one, it is trains through wormholes (nice victorian touch, I'd expect nothing less froma british author). In both cases, fancy technologies allow a more or less unchanged humanity to get along reasonably well... but this is where the good parallels end. And everything goes awry in the Commonwealth.

In the confederation, starships are common place, but what really defines the unioverse are Edenists. Transhumans which share a sort of multiple personality through the 'affinity' bond, genetically spliced within them before birth.

They are masters of genetic engineering, at the point in which their spaceships are living and sentient beings. But even so, the human side shows up in the fact that some of them are renegades, and the technologies they rely on have been pirated more than once. It's only an ethical problem to keep the rest of humanity from embracing them.

Now, confront this with the Commonwealth, where the defining point is the WornHole technology. Dear Good peter would like us to believe that, once the demon is out of the bottle, no government has tried to replicate the thing to suit its own agenda. Instead, everybody is queueing ordinately to the two guys who seemingly engineered the first one, paying their dues to help them build an unrivalled commercial empire.

More than this, another so called 'dinasty' possess monopoly on the other important technology, force fields. and none of these two are trying to gut each other by intruding in the other's turf. ah! I'm sorry, but that's unbelievable... I just can't believe that, after three hundred years, the technology isn't still commonplace. I mean, that's three hundred years. Just look at what happened with lasers, once they went public!!! they're commonplace after only thirty years.

and in three hundred years, control over WHs has been so strict that only one of them has been used for an illegal heist? ah! again, this is just wishful thinking. It is blatantly avoiding to look at gibson's first law of technology, which asserts: "The streets will find its uses". meaning that every technology is applied by normal people and criminals alike in ways unforeseen by their inventors... no matter how hard the writer try to set up the scene in order to avoid this. and replicating a three hundred years old tech should be easy enough for the syndicates, which are still seemingly strong in the commonwealth...

Ph!

Other than that, the characters just do not have the verve of the Confederation people. Kime is may be the most human, the ex pilot of the first (and last) Mars Space mission, turned enterprise captain when its mission is interrupted by the two geniuses with a hand-made spacesuit and their newly fangled wormhole...

The SI, the multi-conscoiusness which results from the fusion of the first AI and many other human minds thereafter, is extremely under-utilised in the plot, yt it would seem that it has big stakes on human survivals. After all, its physical location is still somewhere in CW space. Plus, it's made of human minds, after all. The justification given for itssympathetyc neutrality is good enough, but still, I'd expect them to pull their own weight in the battle. Anyway I believe that it could be safely assumed that for weapons inventiveness the SI may not be able to match the trillion of humans minds, albeit separate.

The only thing I'd save is the enemy, MorningLightMountain. Incredibly inhuman, and really alien in its behaviour. But even there, I seriously doubt that a life form would be able to exterminate everything in his own path, and keep itself clear of parasites... I mean, think of it: a planetary intelligence, a single species, with a very high biological uniformity, uninclined from what we read to genetically engineer itself... why didn't human try to use bio-weapons, of which they're masters, against it? enough for the moment. I'll continue ranting about it later...

the perfect present for me:

Ever wondered what the perfect present for me? Every year I get an endless stream of scarfs, rubbed/coated socks (sorellina, take a note, 'cause I don't need a new pair every year :-P)... I do enjoy some of the surprises, but frankly, very rarely I have been as glad as I was when as a 12-years old I used to receive an astronomy book from my godfather...



so here is my perfect present, finally... a framed picture of the astronaut's footprint on the lunar soil...

or, as an alternative:

a picture of "Buzz" looking at the US flag in the same venue...

scroll down for more ideas, though... A bit pricey, but definitely worth my face when I'll rip the wrapping, I promise... :-)

Slow Step...

Enygmatic title, this post... I'm going to brag (no, once again!) about a passion of mine...

I'm a sucker for Mitsuru Adachi and his quintessentially adolescential (teenage) manga...

I'm not a teen-ager anymore (if age is additive, I'm in fact two teen-agers, by now). But I confess that I still enjoy reading his manga... I didn't even discover them during my teen years, but way after that, well into university, thanks to the very much younger friend Paolo...

Usually Adachi talks(draws) about sport, high-school, and one or more triangle-love... some people say that they are all the same basic story, but that familiarity also confort the reader that they'll find what they're looking for...

Battlestar Galactica Season 3 is finally out...

yep it is... and it's apparently very good...

we left the humans in a bad situation at the end of the second series, they settled down on a planet by popular vote, and after Cylons arrived en masse the "Adama" navy jumped clear of the system... a pretty grim situation uh? I'm curious to see how it all shapes up...

so tonight I'll probably skip my Ally McBeal to make space for it... or at least start the download... :-P do the same guys, I know some of you have been waiting for this...

ps: in the title link, a page with a music clip comparing the old and the new series. it rocks!!! (but I can't make it appear in here... Frak!)

Il coccodrillo come fa?

I'm bored of writing in elnglish only, so may be you'll find some posts in italian (or french, who knows).

The reason for this is simple. some things I can't express properly in english, and for some other italian doesn't cut it.

so, let's go for a mix-up... kind of my brain right now.

anyway, have a nice week / buon inizio di settimana a tutti!

Luca/Gufo

ps: the title refers to a song which i founf myself singing while cycling to work today... a child's music hit of some years ago, in Italy... click on the link to download mp3 and lyrics (if you're so inclined)

acc!!!

this morning I woke up at four o'clock. some clever person in the building has decided that they need heating at four o' clock in the morning, I can't fathom why - old people having sex over the blanket? urgh, that's disgusting...

anyway, thanks to this unknown, my bedroom had a nice thrumming noise since four o'clock (I better repeat, freaking four o'clock in a bicycle!!!), so I couldn't sleep.

what do you do when you can't sleep? well, I wasn't hungry, didn't really want to read, so I decided to advance a lil bit my work. so went in the salon and started working at my thesis, cataloguing the files in my 250GB LaCie hard drive... sometimes I just loose some of them and it's a pain in my bum when I still have to write them up in the thesis... I also ealised how many missing pieces there are... found a few errors here and there too late now to correct... I'll just have to gloss over them...

all in all, a proficuous day until now...

now I am off to the postoffice to get two registered mails, which I strongly suspect to be more parking fines... or may be God (if there's any) has decided to stop hassling me and may be my appeal has had success... I really am through with turning my money over to the state for a misplaced road sign not complying EU regulations. rant!!!

well, you all, have a nice day!!! ;-)

How long can you drive in reverse gear???

That is, before the police pulls you over? An aussie tried to do this... he was stopped by the police after only 20Km, but his p;lan was to do the full 500 which separated him from Perth... the guy justified himself saying that his gearbox had broken...



it is true that service stations are few and far between in the australian outback, but come on!!!

(click on the link for the full details)

and what about weddings?

regarding my bro' wedding, my other younger bro has put up some piccies online... enjoy the view of me wearing a suite... and a typical (modern) sardinian wedding. peace and love, brothers and sisters...

tonight is relax time, will watch "The Constant Gardener", which seemingly portray Pharma industries as big ugly multinational corporation bent on exploiting poor people in developing countries... which may be the true... Only, may be they don't exploit just developing countryman... how about young post-docs? just kidding mate... or may be not? hasta la vista!!!

and here we are again...

it's the weekend. I've given a very interesting presentation (no shit, really) to the MedChem board here at Jans(s)enn... my work of the last six months did cause quite a lot of buz (sorry that I can't show it, it's classified). I liked that, kicking a wasp nest...

now it's the weekend, with my girlfriend busy working (night watch in the hospital) and voting (back to Liege) I'll try to concentrate on my thesis writing the whole of saturday and sunday... so that next weekend will be able to spend some quality time with her... good weekend to everybody reading, then...

Gnam!!!

here comes a nice dragonfly... but there's something else on the flower...

lost my counter and all other customisations...

Damn, I switched over to the new blogger/google/beta and have now lost everything... will take some time to recover them, hopefully my counter wioll not have been reset.

On The Nature of Marriage

Realising that my brother was getting married (for real!!!) got me thinking... Mind you, I've never been adverse to it as some friends, but talking to my girlfriend I tried to explain her how i did saw the marriage in my very personal, atheistic, humanistic view of the world...

Marriage is not about being christians. It's present in all cultures of the world. or at least, 99.9%. It's not certainly about GOD, since atheist chinese and japanese still marry... the way I see it, it is a vow, you taking responsibility of caring about your broom/bride, in front of those who constitute your immediate society. Parents, friends, everybody you care about and whose opinion you deem important. It's a pledge that you make to other person, in my case a pledge of exclusivity (being faithful to him/her), a reassurance that once she's pregnant I will not escape with another one, no matter how strong the temptation... As a matter of fact, a very mundane thing. An insurance policy for her. it's my way of saying "Don't worry, I'll be there for our children to grow responsibly."

So, when I'll take the big step (or plunge?), I'll go to church (for very social reason, namely my gf and family being catholic), gleefully lie about all that GOD stuff, and be sincere about loving her and taking care of her until death do us part... I guess it's a reasonable and honest compromise... 'nuff said...

let's go back to space/science/funny things now... ;-)

Speedy Planets...

Astronomers have discovered Jupiter sized planets orbiting their home stars in less than one days... this means they're so close that their surface is heated at 3000 Celsius!!! If we had one of them here, it would probably appear like a bulge on the sun ball... wouldn't that be cool?

Isn't it unfair?

Another year goes by, and yet I haven't won the Nobel... Physics went two days ago, Chemistry yesterday...

it's really depressing... makes me think that may be a career in finances would have been more proficuous... especially noting that at my same age or less, young finances people here have their car and home bills footed by the company... grrr... as if they were the one who make the drugs... enough ranting, I better get back to work, or the prize will escape me next year too :-)

Sticky, Stinky, Fishy, Piggy!!!

the four adjectives which me and Marie were serving to each other during our holidays in sardinia... it was damn hot and we were coming back home after one day spent out touring the northern coast... badly in need for a shower, as you can guess...

Piggy was added at the last minute, when a couple of wild boar crossed our path as we were driving back to the B&B... While one of them cruised along my car, I half thought about hitting him for the barbecue the day after... Luckily I didn't do it. First, we were inside the borders of a national park, so big fine... Second, even if i did hit him, our landlady told us, it would probably have killed la macchinetta but wouldn't have done much harm to him - this was the fate of my landlady car when she did the same.



incidentally, here's the powerful moyen de transport we used during the epic holidays...

let's come back to the boar now:
Third, had he/she been in heat (the pig, not us), the meat would have been very disgusting...

so, long live the wild boar!

Back to belgium...

Ehy I'm back... very very tired, so that I had to take one day more of vacation to sleep it over... not that it did help... being Belgium as gloomy as ever, today I still feel very very sleepy. may be because I had to wake up at 5.30 to dodge the traffic in the Brussels and Antwerpen rings? anyway, I'll try to get my act to gether, now, lil breakfast, lil checking my emails, lil tour saying hello to everybody...

then plunge myself into real work... well, more like powerpointing another idiot-proof presentation...

I leave you with a picture taken during my holidays...

Physics of Superheroes

an interesting read? I don't know... (EDIT: in fact quite a boring one. the first part with the history of superman powers is nice, but in the second one the author goes to infinite lenghts to explain how he computes the force necessary for superman to leap a tall building... or may be I'm just forgetting that most people don't leave as I do in the Mathemagic realm)

I'll be trying to finish Judas Unchained during the flight, and in the small bites of free time during my holidays...

time to go now...

see you soon!

Richard "Hamster" Hammond hurt in car crash

Many of you know of my fascination for the BBC program TOP GEAR. I do enjoy the mix of light entertainment and car news, get angry to their unreasonable stand against global warming (albeit some of their stances are reasonably put). anyway, it's possibly my fav program...

Today's news is that one of his presenter, Richard hammond has been seriously hurt during the filming of the next series of episodes.

what can I say? get well soon, Hamster...

My Pirate name is...

keeping up with yesterday's Talk Like a Pirate Day, here it comes!!!

My Pirate Name Is...

Cannibal Sultan of Timor

What's Your Pirate Name?

WOW!!!

a lots of visits (37 pageloads) yesterday...

it must depends from the fact that I posted a lot so it did often pop up in the 'recently updated' list of blogspot... let's see if I can repeat the exploit today...

before the hyatus of my holidays... I guess I will not be posting a lot during the coming ten days...

will try to put up some holidays pictures when I get back... :-)

How much does the National Security budget of the US amounts to?

I can't know (you have to pay to get access). I wish I did though. I have always been wandering what a drag the "Defense" expenses are on countries. How better will we be if we didn't have to spend all those money and energies in unproductive things? Of course we may niot be that better as our neighbours would invade us to rob our richs...

It is a sad, sad world...

Wii is wiith us...

No pesky PS3, thanks, I have been a Nintendo fans since I saw Pikmin on the gamecube... I love challenging, yet cute-looking videogames, and there's nothing like nintendo for them...

And Gamecube successor, the Wii, is coming out soon... featuring a new two-pieces, motion-sensitive, free-hand controller which I really believe is going to make games more fun... think about playing soulcalibur by really punching your opponents sitting in the sofa close to you... or most likely standing in front of the TV...

I can't wait to play next gen's Zelda: Twilight Princess



and Wii Sports:



and what else? well, I don't care. I play very rarely (not at all in the last nine months or so), so even very few (possibly PARTY/multiplayer) games will do for me.

But I hope they keep up a decent pipeline so that the user base will not switch over to the more muscular PS3 and X360... XP

Personally, I think M$ is going to loose anyway. Nintendo has shown with the DS that it can keep up and beat the crap out of Sony, let's hope tey keep up with the good job...

Project Bioshield: The Mess

No, it's not a new videogame title for PS2...

it's the US initiative to protect themselves from unlikely bio-weapons terrorist attack...

Tara talks about it. Original source from the NY Times.

apparently, big pharma companies are not interested in the deal (I wonder why), so small start ups with no proven track record are stepping in. I feel like making unsubstantiated allegations today, so I will put out mine: is this the truth? or is just simply that lots of these start ups sprouted from nowhere are just clocely linked to government personalities in charge of assigning the fundings? Are americans, once again, lining someone's pockets with public money? nothing wrong, mind you, if they were getting something in return... but... let me doubt this...

Now that I've sprouted non-sense, I can even read the article :-)

EDIT: read the article... it seems I wasn't so wrong. As Andreotti says, to think bad of someone is a sin, but you always get it right.

quote from the article:

“A torturous labyrinth of federal fiefdoms into which billions disappear,” Representative Christopher Shays, Republican of Connecticut, said of the program. “Yet few antidotes have yet to emerge.”

I am a Tiger!!!

thanks to the chick

Men's issue with their body...

Too many hair, too smelly, too much... male? yep, that's it...

some scientists tackle the fact that we men are not all Brad Pitt

We smell, we fart, we have hair spread all around our bodies, and so on... some people are ok with it. I am ok with myself, but my GF sometimes complain about my body odour - strange, since previous acquantainces never raised the issue - age effect?
mah...

interestingly, the people most obsessed are those addicted to MTV and such 'entertainment'... not surprising... potato couches sitting on the sofa all day looking at beautifully sculpted male/female dancers. your self esteem isn't certainly going to go up...

again, I find strange that am not disturbed by the fact of spending my free time watching Desperate Housewives or Ally Mc Beal. it must be 'cause I enjoy the stories more than the picture (albeit the girls in the show are certainly hot). or may be I don't need to fantasize on them. I have a real woman sharing my life - kudos to her... ;-)

It's Talk Like A Pirate day!!!

A bit everywhere in the big ol' net. (that's the official site though)



I first found out about it looking for a movie (will not tell you which one) in the Pirate Bay.

but even Pharyngula is celebrating it, with a very weird tampons ad:



if you want to know more, just google it

I can not believe this...

a piece of news as a follow up to my post regarding Steve Irwin: (some of) his fans may be taking their revenge by mutilating sting-rays...

no, really, what do they think they're achieving?

(thanks to Boltgirl)

A new species of bird!!!

It doesn't happen every day. in fact it hasn't happened at all in the past 50 years...
A new species of bird has been identified in India...



Shelley has more about it.

(also on yahoo news)

SubNormali

Now I can't stop posting... it's raining anyway and don't want to get wet going home, so... will wait for it to stop. in the meantime, enjoy this nice amateur sub-movie of a nightime immersion:

No AdSense, thanks...

At least, not if the ads presented are unappropriate as in this case: Scientific Evidence (is this Gore the ex US's VP? who knows?)

I mean, a weblog about science and google put in it pseudo-scientific burble like "Modern Science Finds God" and "The Final Theory"? pu-lease...

I better keep AdSense at bay, then... poor but honest. augh!

To the Movies (II)

Frankly, though, this one, featuring my old-time favourite Edward Norton, seems to be so much better: The Illusionist

In turn-of-the-century Vienna, a magician (Norton) uses his abilities to secure the love of a woman far above his social standing.

looks like a plan. I'd do the same, if I had magical powers :-)

To the Movies

Snooping around the IMDB, I found the trailer for this nice movie: School for Scoundrels... there's no vote as of yet, but I'll check it out on the torrent to see how it is and report to you... have a nice evening, guys and girls... ;-)

wellcome to all visitors... (updated)

My counter below is burgeoning toward the one-hundredth visit. who will it be?

Until now, I've had mostly visit from Italy, and the UK (from my ex-lab). The one from Italy come from Turin, but mostly from Tuscany... The usual suspects here too...

Unexpected visits from all over the world, the US, Australia, India and so on... you're all wellcome!

now that I have a referrer list you can check where visiting people comes from, too. ;-)

UPDATE: and the one-hundredth is... PAC, if I am not mistaken, who's checking me out from his university public station. Him, or someone else from Pisa. Gio' may be? no way of knowing unless they come forward and confess...

Judas Unchained

What does Judas Unchained means? Frankly, I don't know. It's just the title of the book I am reading now. Follow up on last week's book, Pandora's Star, it did arrive in the post the same day I was done with its prequel...

The commonwealth traversies goes on and on, charachters become more tri-dimensional, or may be not. Frankly, I enjoy the book but its main players are far from the detail of Hamilton previous cycle. It certainly is a page turner for me, and am looking forward to discovers what the Guardians are up to. i only hope it won't be another Deus Ex Machina like in the Naked God. In there, the solution did look enat, but lazy too... Too easy postulating a superhuman intelligence which fixes things for us... well, enough spoiling...

I just hope I'll manage to finish reading it before I fly to sardinia. or may be in flight. who knows?

have a nice week you all!

The Intermediate Countdown

Minus three to the so long delayed holidays...

Minus two Presentations to go: one for Management, one for the Cardio Vascular Centre Of Excellence...

Minus one back pain to get rid of...

and then it's GO! Fly away where no gufo has been before!!!

(I dis-like Star Trek but have to admit liking their tag-line)

ready, steady...

go!

only half an hour left before my presentation to the scientific committee which is supposed the judge the goodness of my first six months here at JnJ, and suggest new investigation routes... finger crossed.

I managed to swap slides in my presentation even now, hopefully nobody will grunt about their printouts diverging from what I am going to show...

well, that's it for now, more news to follow! and good luck to me!

It was about time...

that someone did stand up and supported animal testing. I'm sick of animal rights hypocrites... I know animal testing is unpleasant, and it would be nice to have an alternative. but there is none.

I am personally working for that - how many self declared animal-lawyers can say the same? Still, the day we will be able to get rid of those extremely valuable aids is very far in the future.

have a nice day!

ps: the Pro-Test organisation also has a blog, which act as more as a science-oriented discussion forum...

What happens if/when

you put together Harvard's evolutionary (socio)biologist like Robert Trivers, and MIT's linguist Noah Chomsky?

a lot of interesting discussions, that is.

you can also look/listen at them:



they jump from one disparate subject to another: from the Iraq War to self-deception in animals...

funny that in the transcription it says that these two never met each other even if they did work in the same city... :-)

oh, and by the way: kudos to SEED for giving this (and others) away for free...

and thanks to the scientific activist for letting me know

My NERD-iness score...

I just don't know how to spend my time, today...

TopGun Galactica

Hey there, wellcome back. it's showtime again, so here comes a video grabbed from youtube where some fan put together BattlestarGalactica scenes with the theme from TopGun (Highway to The Dangerzone). Enjoy!

here's something funny about sex

Hi there. for this weekend, I want to suggest my italian speaking friends a website where some wacko gather crazy questions about sex from various online 'forums' - one of them is from the infamous teen-magazine "Cioe`" - which bradly translated means "That is", but is an often used interjetion for teen agers, kind of 'dig it'.

so, click here - girlpower vs cioe - and enjoy!

What to listen

Just a quick link to the very good BBC Radio Player. Not as simple as the Rai Radio Player (just six buttons, nothing more), but the sheer number of channels and broadcast prorams available makes it worth a check.

cheers, and thanks BBC for making this available to "offworlders" too... Kudos!

(best channel for open minds: BBC Channel 4)

Of Time Machines and Birthday Cakes

So, suppose you forgot that monday last week was your birthday. Any reference is purely coincidental. Suppose you felt ashamed that you didn't buy a cake to share with your friends, so that you didn't say it to anyone. You obviously want to amend this.

The first idea that came up to my mind is to devote yourself at creating a new branch of physics, and manage to create a wormhole which acts as a time machine. you then step back in the future, drop to the nearest patisserie/supermarket, buy a cake - you birthday cake must obviously be produced the day of your anniversary. Finally, you step forward in time and you share the cake with your friends. However, since cakes have an 'eat me before ' typically less than one week, you end up witha cake who's rotten. or may be not. but it doesn't really matter, none of your friends is going to believe that it's still good when they see the writing on the wrappings... damn... So much time wasted for nothing...

well, you're left with no friends, but a time machine, and that is reasonably cool. you can always go and look for new friends in different ages...

What am I reading

May be you're interested, may be you're not.

but here comes what's been keeping me awake at night - no, it's not my GF.



a book which is the follow up to 'The Lexus and the Olive tree' (which I haven't read yet). In essence, it talks about how the world market is being flattened by globalisation, and how this is going to impact our lives. Unfortunately, as many american books, after a good start he only stress the point over and over again...

So that after a while I lost interest and cast it aside. it's been lying on my kitchen floor for two weeks until my GF picked it up.

Now, it's been substituted by a very clever book by Peter F Hamilton, author of the acclaimed (by me, if nothing else) "Reality Disfunction" cycle. The new Book is called Pandora's Star (click here to read the prologue on the author's official web page)



As in the Reality Disfunction cycle, humans have spread along the galaxy but this time using WormHoles rather than Spaceships. The first chapter is very good indeed, and after that is a jump of three hundred years in the future, to when a neighboring (only one thousand light years away from Earth) star is secluded from the rest of the universe by mean of a gigantic shell of exotic matter - The Dyson Pair, since there are two of them, puzzle the human, which decide then to send their first faster-than-light spaceship to investigate - 'cause wormholes don't get that far without five or six intermediate steps, and each one needs very expensive infrastructure to be mantained.

The Universe is accurately detailed as in Hamilton's tradition, and reminds strongly of the Hyperion universe. However, it lacks credibility in the semi-fantasy social ordering, and the absolute monopoly over technologies such as Force fields and WormHoles transport - the Corporation who runs the latters can decide to cut everybody off the Commonwealth, and I can believe the governments would allow that. and if so, after three hundred years I'd expect the same technology to be available to everybody, so that worlds cut out would eventually form a kind of shadow commonwealth... mah... annyway, as Space Operas go, there's certainly a lot of meat and high-tech-babbling and gizmoes and stuff to keep me entertained. a tad below the previous saga, though. you can't beat the combination spaceships+zombies, can you?

The Crocodile Hunter killed by... a StingRay

I often watched his documentaries when I was in the UK... always meddling with very dangerous animals such as snakes, sharks, and of course, crocodiles. one of his pets was... a dingo, which isn't exactly tame...

at the end, what was inevitable (IMHO) happened. while shooting a documentary swimming along a sting ray, he must have ennoyed it too much, and the ray put the sting in his heart...

Goodbye Irwin!

Happy Birthday to me...

happy birthday to me...

Hi everybody, I'm 32 today... since the crucial date of 33 (Jesus Christ's age) is approaching, I thought about making a balance of my life to date:

- find a nice girlfriend (check)
- starting a family (on the way there)
- being liked by my friends (check... ehr... right?)
- getting a degree (check and a half)
- getting a job (half-check)
- starting my own religion (to do)
- lifting one hundred Kg on the bench (check)
- parachuting (to do)
- win the nobel prize (to do)

I believe it's all... I guess this puts me above JC in the list of accomplished things. after all, He didn't have a degree, one of his friends betrayed him to death, and as for girlfriend... well, let's skip over it. Over all, he only managed to start a religion, ad get hung like a thief. sad uh? Luckily, I am here to dave the day... Ok I stop being such a pun and start my first honest day of work as a thirty-two year old... what? boy? man? bah, whatever...

a zent'annos!

To AdSense, or not to AdSense?

here's the question. should I subscribe to adsense advertisement and let them stick some box with ads from which I can gain a sh*tload of money (unlikely since the measy trafic of this weblog, but you never know...)
Frankly, I don't think I should. if only 'cause they'd go somewhere where I don't want them to be... On the other side, I'm very curious about what kind of ads google will think are 'appropriate' to this blog... but what if once subscribed I can't get the bloody thing out of my html code?

any suggestions? any one who's already had experience on this?

La scritta sul muro

and here it is a blog (italian only, I'm sorry) with some hilarious signposts/graffiti from (w)all(s) over the world...

just an example of what you'll find in there:



damn, I had to hack the html code in the site to grab the pic. I hate when people disable the right-click menus...

Back in the water

I've finally made it. I managed to wake up early enough to go to swim right before working... I know that many readers may find this very strange, and borderline crazy, but that's the best way to start the day for me. I've been going to the gym, or to swim, or both, in the morning for the mosty part of my extended PhD time. and before, at University in Italy, I would study until 10 and then rush down to my friend Fulvio's gym (PaleXtra 2000 - Fulvio, come on, put up a nice web site!!!).

I had abandoned this healthy habit after moving to the new house in April - in fact I started doing sport in the evening after I moved to Belgium. But I didn't like it, really, in the evening I like to relax, watch a lil bit of TV (I have a penchant for humour romantic TV series, such as Ally Mc Beal, and Desperate Housewives). So it really wasn't ideal to trin after work. Some people find it relaxing. It takes the stress they accumulate during the day, at work. I don't. Sport is not for relaxing, is for training. And your mind must be fresh if you want to be able to handle those weight seriously.

But work here has been getting heavier and heavier, and at the evening I pledged to finish off my PhD thesis, so I had to relinquish something. Either my lovely girlfriend, or sport. Which way would you have gone?

What convinced me to do the effort to get back was a streak of pain in my back in the last week (some friends say this was 'caused' by my GF, but I like to think of myself as a gentleman so I can't confirm (nor deny). Anyway, it made work impossible, thanks to the wonderful hammock/chairs that some architect decided would fit the hyper-space workplace. I'd rather sit on a wooden bench.

but never mind, 'cause this pushed me to enter the water once again. which is good, I have to shed some weight (not really, rather put up some in the right places) and get back in shape for my brother's wedding the end of this month. Otherwise the suite I bought last year will not fit me...

well, I haven't spoken too much about swimming, in this post. may be next time. have a nice day! :-)

A new counter

Keeping an eye on who visits the blog is important. this way I'll have a better idea of who's reading it, and then I may modify my posts accordingly. Since the NeoCounter has expired, I decided to switch over to another free counter: StatCounter
it should appear on the right hand side bar, more or less like this:

whoops!!!

View My (Pitiful, for the moment) Stats

check it out, and make it tick higher and higher!!!

EDIT: may be it doesn't show in this post. but it does on the side bar, of this I'm sure.

EDIT II: never mind, can't put javascript inside my posts, apparently. well, as I said, just check the side bar. I'll do the same!

Those people at BMW are certainly funny...

here comes an old commercial from those funny germans over at BMW (click on it to start the download and play of it)



it doesn't seem to work, does it? Oh yes it does now!!!
(I'm the lord of html hack'n'slash!!!)
Enjoy the fine german humour ;-)

Humour for Geeks

Nuff' said.

Busy busy damn busy...

as the title, says, I've been damn busy this couple of weeks. writing up reports for the finishing cardiovascular projects, then at home wirting up the ninth chapter of the thesis... and finally, when i get the time/chance, trying to keep mi social life... well, alive...

some few weeks left before presenting what I did in the past six weeks to a bunch of scientist colleagues, then to management... Briefly before that a poster is going to fly to San Francisco for the ACS meeting with my name on it... the same work I'll try to publish in paper form in the next few months (keep an eye on J Med Chem) - and my boss thinks he may be good to push it for next year sheffield MGMS meeting. good! but that's for the future...

it is still september now, and it's going to be a pretty hard month... until the 23rd, that is... then finally holidays!!! getting back to sardinia to be the best man at my brother wedding... good lord I'm so waiting for this... the holidays, more than the wedding

the river on the bridge kway...

What kind of crazy person would build a river on a bridge? well, me. in my "most favourite movie" section, that was the title. kudos to Gupy for spotting it. now it's corrected.

now, how could I actually build a river on a bridge? and if the river goes on the bridge, what is below? another river? or a non-river, i.e. the space left empty when we moved the river up-bridge? who knows...

too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...too much work and not play makes luca a dumb boy...

NOT using the GPS will enlarge your brain!!!

It's what this paper from PNAS says: "Navigation-related structural change in the hippocampi of taxi drivers."

they are not kidding, PNAS stands for Proceeding of the National Academy of Science - so this is a serious paper... apparently they found out that a region of the ippocampus gets enlarged (and a close one shrinks to leave space for it) depending on the time the driver have been working in the london roads.

thanks to shelley at retrospectacle for this

Comparative advertisement

'botta e risposta' in the automotive industry...

Movie of (her) life

that's something interesting: a girl takes a picture of herself every day, for three years:



pity that she doesn't change that much. I wish someone did it with some child: I wish I had had the idea and taken piccies of my lil brother from 12 to 17. now, that would have been cool...

kudos to the Allen Almanac (found, as usual, via pharyngula)

and for more stop-motion human animations fun, check out this: a guy takes a picture of her wife every other day while she's pregnant...

And now for some sad remembering...

It was Marcinelle's anniversary some days ago. A very sad date for all those italians who came to belgium. Frankly, I didn't really know anything about it before coming here myself. But I've been told that it's been pretty much ignored by the italian newspapers. I hope they didn't forget - as I did :-( - the other two very sad events that happened the 6th and 9th of August, 1945. Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

I'm joust posting a piccie taken from Pharyngula:

Zidane-Materazzi

I couldn't help myself, I had to post this: Some humorous french (I guess) have put up a series of animated gifs showing how the incident was seen by people of different nationalities...

the germans:



the frenchies:



les italiens:



les journalistes:

I'm on Google...

A friend was all too excited about our blogs appearing on google. that is, if you are looking for me and type in 'gufodotto'... for example.

in fact, my first reference is to the TypeKey profile which i use to comment on ScienceBlog's Pharyngula (according to Nature, the most visited science blog!!!). not strange, in fact, since every comment posted there has a link to my profile.

The second link is in fact this blog. Frankly I don't know how this may happen, except may be that Im the only gufodotto in the whole world. Fair enough...

after that, it's a trickle of references to various forum to which I do currently take part or did in the past.

As for less cryptic references to myself, searching google for "luca antonio fenu" returns as first hit an email I sent long time ago to the CCL (Comp Chem List) looking for a forgotten program for Atom Typing... the next two don't match at all, the fourth is my personal empy webpage from the University of Southampton. that's it. The rest is rubbish...

So, assuming that in the future Google's hard drives don't get erased by some cataclysmic event, and someone can put together my real name and my totem name, my grand-grand-grand -posthuman-children will be able to piece together my life from 2001 onward at least... good luck to them, I hope they'll still have a decent civilisation by then...

Best pull-line ever!!!

An old fav of video-games-'n'-comics addicted: Penny Arcade.



where the now defunct SEGA Dreamcast (my second fav console) drinks its way toa premature dismissal... and try to pull a girl at the bar... what a line!!! "Are those moon pants? 'cause that ass is outta this world!!!" (for my anglophobic friends: "Son mutande lunari quelle? xke' il tuo sedere non e' di questo pianeta" - no, it doesn't sound nearly as funny - italian is for romantics)

Comic of The Week - or - Is All Coffee Evil?

A nice strip featuring a young computer scientist graduate who start to work for a pretty Mad Female Scientist (TM) busy ironing the bugs out of her DoomsDay Machine, and her Evil (still learning) Intern.



I just post the first sunday strip which tackles with the moral dilemma associated with caffeinated beverages.

Who's this?

Someone is posting bogus comments on my blog. get the hell outta here, yo'...

this is for friend only. and no, we don't want to fly cheap to canada. and if we wanted we wouldn't be using your pitiful website.

On another, more relaxed note, I see that some people I actually don't know are actually visiting my blog... romania, germany(is this who i think he is?)... you're all wellcome! and please leave a comment... bye bye!

EDIT: and the counter keeps creeping upwards! now even people from the US and Austria are coming here... welcome to you all!!!

Diamonds

Sooner or later you have to tackle the problem. should you give a diamond ring to your GF to ask her to marry? but that's not what I want to talk about tonight... in fact, the question has come about between me and my lovely but never mind, we'll talk about this another time.

I was reading a book (Pandora's Star - P.F. Hamilton) and there it was cited the very high thermal conductivity of diamond. And it didn't make any sense to me. I mean, thermal conductivity is provided mostly by free electron flow. and of all materials, Diamond is the hardest one, i.e. the one with less available electron of them all... To fact check on this, I did ask a person who knows about diamond. A skype-friend of mine who's engineer in a diamond mine in namibia (yes I do meet some particularly interesting people over the net)
. Tpo no avail, however. She certainly knows how to get them out of the ground, but knows nothing about their characteristic. so i went to the (free) repository of all knowledge, wikipedia, and found out that what good Ol' Peter writes is absolutely true. But also what I say it's true. In fact, diamond's "highest than everything else" conductivity is caused not by free electrons, but by phonons, which because of the very regular 3D structure of the crystal lattice can propagate very efficiently. This is SO COOL!!! Oh God I do love science. And on this diamond bombshell, it's time to say goodnight!!!

Jeremy Clarkson as a London mayor

at least that's what he's saying in his weekly ranting on the times. just what we need. a global-warming-denying petrol-head directing the busiest city in the western world.

NB: I still have to read more than the first two lines, but I thought I'll update later on on the factual content.

EDIT: now I've read it. it's full of its usual rant-rubbish... but I guess it is as usual, show.

coming back

to posting on this blog. am sorry if I went away for a while. but life tends to become hectic, at periods, here in flat-land...

I do have a draft-post containing pictures of my new house, to satisfy the curiosity of some friends who've been asking this for oh so long time. but haven't found the time to put it together as it deserves.

As for the news, I just spent the week end stranded in turnhout as my car's turbo-compressor kicked the bucket... it's now at the dealer and I'm running around by bike and loving every moment of it. well, except when it rains, that is.

for a change, my GF has come up here rather than me driving down to brussels, and we've gone around by bike. the fields around are crisscrossed by cycle paths (as every civil region of earth should be) and it's incredible the amount of people that actually enjoy it. at least for some one like me from sassari, sardinia, where the only person above 14 to use the bike
as a transport method really were me, my brother Carlo and a few others.

mah...

other than that (cycling), thanks to my lovely Marie I was able to go on a brief hunting expedition to Ikea to finally get two stylish-modern-looking-suspended armchairs, and then experimenting in the kitchen. as a result, I'm one Kg heavier today, but I now am comfortably sure that I know how to do Pasta with Scampi and Courgettes (zucchine), and Salmon and Gamberi spiedini (brochettes)... All this with a side serving of Melanzane with tomato/basilico sauce, and ricotta secca. and, of course, a good glass of white wine (Le Arenarie, Sella & Mosca, 2004). hope your mouth is watering by now... may be next time we'll have a barbecue together?

cheers

new counter!

my first experimentin personalising this blog's code. so i will be able to see how many people actually look at it... very few I'm afraid... have a nice day you all who come around here...

splash!!!

half an hour ago I managed to get back home - just. it started to rain. heavily. I mean it. like tropical storm, albeit I've nevcer been to the tropics. anyway, here's the result. I'm stuck home, since one exit of the road is flooded.

(I know, it's sideway, I couldn't be arsed to flip it.)

and the other end is gridlocked by a trafic jam... damn... it's my girlfriend's birthday
today, I did what I could to free up myself, but to no avail. there must be some kind of curse upon me...

another one...

Oh, my, this one is soooo goood...

survival of the cutest

these hot summer days (yes, hot, in belgium) mosquitoes are a real nuisance... they get in my room while I'm reading my books after dark, and wait until I'm half asleep to start zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz-ing around my ear. if you want to suck my blood, just do it and the hell with the noise. let me sleep!!! for the moment, I amuse my present and past sleeping partner by waking in the middle of the night and going hunting. pretty refined tactics, too, now I know they tend to hide on the underside of ledges in furnitures. the little bastards are very good at this... may be one day we will move to another planet, and will not bring the with us... we will finally get rid of them... but... is this going to be such a good idea? here's a nice comic strip on the subject...

Dance like a monkey!!!!

may be, not many of you know about Intelligent Design and Creationism issues in the Us of A. Some of you do know that I do care about this though... here's a videoclip from someone else who seems to care too... I'm loving this song!!! got to blast it through the lab at full power!!!



Oh, Iforgot, the song is from The New York Dolls, which is (I am told) a thirty year old pre-punk band...

and continuing on the evolution-based songs, here we go with Emerald Rose's : We come from monkeys - lyrics here

Wanna know?

What will happen in the next seventy thousand years? look at the past: The loom has a nice post about it. it talks about a recenta paper in PNAS regarding the evolution of earliest primates, and their voyage around a world deeply changed by global warming - whatever caused it back then, 55 Milions years ago...