it was about time

ok, i have to admit that i almost gave up on this blog. shame on me, i know, but whatever. it's been a tough time. it's been a tough year. too much happening, and nothing at the same time... and i thought about blogging so often. actually thought about writing mostly every single moment, with my mind always going too far away, especially when i'm alone with my freaking self. but still, didn't really manage to get much written down after all... bought countless notebooks and only managed to scribble on less than half of them... guess it's my perfectionist paranoid attitude - if i have an idea, it has to be perfect, and since of course it never is, then i delay it and delay it in order to be more perfect. procrastination, that should be my name. or denial. works pretty well too. look at my room. been living here for more than 2 months, and it's a huge mess with cluttering stuff of all sorts. ok, my room is usually messy and for some unknown reason it's even messier in the fall. october, especially. i usually manage to get it together by november though. but this time, got no excuse. it's been weeks! forgot to mention, i changed places. am living in munich now. no longer pretty good old boring heidelberg, where i'm actually spending a lot of time anyway so that it feels like i never left, just that it feels like i left like all the time. yep. changed city, changed jobs. am actually writing at work now - or at least, am supposed to do it and try to whenever i can. that's probably why i haven't been writing a lot outside of work. i mean, i've actually been writing a lot anyway, but for pseudo projects that resemble work, so it doesn't count. and i procrastinate them all the time anyway. but i haven't been writing for myself. haven't even used yet the amazing typewriter my lovely friends got me when i graduated. which is still in heidelberg actually. well had no desk here till last weekend, so it made little sense to carry it around. still, no good excuse for not writing. can't believe i haven't written extensively for months... i have an almost empty notebook with stories from 2 or 3 days from my more than three week long trip in the states. that's also ridiculous. started taking notes but then was too overwhelmed and stopped. and then never wanted to start again without filling the gaps, which of course i never had time to, bec there was always too much to see and hear and live and shoot and tell. well i still have memories, so i should write them down until they're still there. and sort the photos too. but when? no way i'm getting it done, and at the expense of my current and very many thoughts... no freaking way. at least i'm blogging now. have been thinking about doing that for weeks now. that's a start. even an end has a start, the editors sang. they're playing here around these days, don't remember when actually, am not going though. but been to placebo's concert last night, just by chance and it was cool. although we were sitting in the boring places and boring germans did not allow us to go down where it was more fun, bec we didn't have the right tickets... uncool, and way too german... there was plenty of space for us! was cool btw, although way too short, but nicely played - incidentally, how hot is the bass player? never realised that! so tall and skinny... maybe was also due to the cool graphics which came along, probably overdoing a little with super high contrast b/w which i love btw... why do i love it so much, i still don't know... maybe bec i lead a grey life, and i'm constantly looking for something to catch my eye... my eye which happens to be tired at the moment... haven't almost taken a shot since i'm here, only a few useless ones with my new little digital leica jewel, but still i haven't taken my good old minolta out yet. guess i don't even have any film, or maybe i do have a few colour ones which basically means i don't have any. don't even know where to find b/w film here... maybe it's just bec i don't like to shoot at things i don't know, maybe i'm too shy and lazy and anyway am not going around the city that much... or maybe i've got too much 'footage' from this summer, still have to digest it, go through all the pics, would love to print some but coulnd't even imagine how and where and when... am a failure as a photographer, after all i've never been that creative. see you at the bitter end. apparently i'm already there...

el sueño de la razon

opening again with goya's quote (and incision) to carry on along last night line...


ie. the infamous new law just approved in italy about immigration.

was thinking again about it today, especially during one of the talks of the conference. this guy was talking about the "survival rate" of a complex system increasing with its DIVERSITY. apparently, even in early evolution of pre-biotic structures, diversity makes a system more robust against crashes, hence more stable and long-living. apparently my ignorant country is trapped in a pre-pre-biotic state and cannot understand that...

anyway, what pissed me off even more was the (almost) absence of any reference to this law in the main international - especially european - press. not a single line. and it's not that recent, i mean the bill was finally approved yesterday, but it's been under debate in the parliament for several weeks - guess they could have already prepared a column about that. ok, let's give them time. i just wish it is a matter of time.

guess i truly hope it's a matter of time and not a voluntary negligency. i just hope it hasn't been mentioned for whatever random reason but a systematic will to hide the news.

italy is doing something nasty. awful. and it's just round the corner, it's one of the founding members of eu. it IS shameful for the whole europe. they should talk about that. they should be disappointed.

but if you ever (as apparently lots of italians do) think italy is going to benefit from such despicable behaviour, if you ever (guess you wouldn't be on my blog, but whatever) think this outrageous law is going to somehow "protect" italy, nothing forbids you to assume that it is going to "protect" whatever other country in europe as well. what i mean is, if you ever think that in italy they're doing a dirty job, right, but we're going to gain something also elsewhere in europe, then you would probably keep your mouth shut.

something like...
italians are washing dirty clothes for all of us.
let them do it. and thank god we still don't have to do it ourselves.

truly hope this is NOT what people are thinking throughout europe. fortunately, after a whole afternoon browsing the net, i found this BBC issue which partly contradicts me:

Italy adopts law to curb migrants

please have a look, it contains basic info about this ignominious law and also about the ignoble institution of the citizens' patrols, which i also mentioned in yesterday's post.

and please forward it, share it, circulate it (all of you, imaginary readers of my blog) in whichever country you live...

THE SLEEP OF REASON
PRODUCES MONSTERS.

LET'S STAY AWAKE.

bremen, game theory, evolution and immigration

haven't bloggged in a while. a veeeery long while. it's just that i left heidelberg and have been kind of around ever since. and i've been writing, sure, but with good old paper and pen. my friends even got me the sweetest gift - a portable typewriter! - and i initially thought i'd take it around and use it! but it's kind of heavy, so i preferred good old hand writing. hence, i didn't blog.

and now i'm in bremen, actually somewhere close to bremen but also in the middle of nowhere, in the dorms of a fancy shiny private university, which btw is financed by a coffee company - seriously?? seriously: have a look --> jacobs university... if you're wondering, yes, it's the same jacobs guy of the coffee, apparently the company is from bremen (at this point it would have been better if it had been founded by the other famous bremen company... becks beer!)

anyway it's kind of a shame for me being here. me, completely against private education. me, in favour of fair trade products. spending a week in a private university founded by some presumably nasty coffee company guys. anyway, i'm just attending a scientific conference, which has little or nothing to do with the university. at least.

and the conference is about evolution. i've been recently very interested in evolution and possible controversies about it. well, the lectures are not exactly what i expected, but i'm learning a lot anyway.

eg. some of the lectures were about game theory, which i found very interesting and had almost no clue about. i even thought, gees, hadn't it been a hard-core computational research field, i'd even consider it for the future. well, whatever. they were explaining us some games where some patterns arise, which are interesting for biological evolution.

cooperation.
the reason of cooperation between different humans, especially the uncorrelated ones.
cooperation is costly.
and you can usually get a gain anyway even if you don't cooperate, since most of the other individuals are going to cooperate anyway - why on earth should you ever cooperate??

there are also games where you can institute punishment for those who don't cooperate, but systems can be infiltrated by cooperators who don't punish and later by defectors... and a whole lot of other interesting examples. yes, ok, it's all about highly simplified systems, which are then used to model completely different situations.

however, this and other concepts about evolution made me think a lot these days. cooperation. selfishness vs. altruism. the richness in diversity.

especially in the framework of what just happened today in italy - the release of a law that makes immigration a penal crime. with all the obvious consequences of it, not to mention the violation of basic human rights. and the scary institution of citizens' patrols.

if only we were not such a bunch of hypocrites... we even forgot we were a country of migrants ourselves only last century. i guess not even a dramatic (but almost kitsch - have to admit) reconstruction like the one we saw yesterday (the museum of german migration... seriously?? seriously) could make most people change their mind. i was reading the comments of the readers to some articles in the news about the new law, and they're frightening. we've turned into monsters.

guess i'll quote my favourite of goya's...
"The sleep of reason produces monsters"
unfortunately. so true.

and i'll conclude with a photo...
just, this time it's about us. not the danes.

and this time...

... it's not about gamma rays. damn.

damn it's happening

yep. eventually. me packing and leaving. it's happening, for real. and i'm not that psyched after all. i'm just in a terrible mood. well whatever. what would you expect??

missing light problem

as i was cycling yesterday on the bridge looking at the light reflected on the neckar, so happy i had my bike again and stuff... i also realised i'm going to miss this place after all. who could have said that? and not only the light...

ok, i'm becoming too cheesy now. and got no time. maybe i'm just sort of high due to studying and stress and, well, the stupid exam. tomorrow. damn! aaah

une carafe d'eau, svp

ok, this must be one of these fool-proof, an inconvenient truth sort of movie that tries super hard to convince people of the obvious. but still, since i am sooo against bottled water in any respect and this trailer kind of summarises why, i thought i'd post it anyway.

drink tap water, ok??



ps. great radiohead quote :)

awesome t-shirt i found

yes, i know it's rather geeky, but whatever... it's true!!!

another lost photo

these days i'm walking around doing normal stuff and i just miss having my camera with me. i should take it along all the time, just it's too heavy and anyway it's already enough if i remember to take my keys and my head along when i leave home in the morning, so, you do the maths... and these days i'm really seeing so many things i would like to shoot at... like the other day, i was at the grocery store and it was crazy! i mean, group-hysteria crazy! it was the day before may 1st, ie. the day before a holiday. so people were crowding in the grocery store like crazy... and with crazy i mean, that the whole grocery store (and it's a fairly big one) was in the end a huge, single queue to the cash register... when i got in, i just needed 3-4 things and it was not so dramatic, so i though ok, i'll give it a try. but then, in the time i picked up the above mentioned 3-4 things (incidentally, there was no bag of flour left! none! all gone! seriously??) the whole place had turned into a self-feeding serpent-shaped creature of obsessed people!!! and i know this year may 1st was a friday, so it means we had a long weekend ahead of us, but still, on saturday everything was open again, so what's the big rush?? maybe you're leaving town for the long weekend?? then you don't need to buy groceries anyway!!! what the hell?! anyway, back to the lost photo. i'm collecting a series of heidelberg/non-heidelberg pictures these days. i mean these situations that could happen everywhere but for some reason they happen here, in front of my very eyes. and this one was just perfect. people lining in the ailes, every direction possible. i couldn't look around without imagining possible shots. it was amazing. just, no camera. so, no shot. and since i'm not at all able to draw (although a girl i recently met told me it's not so impossible to learn in a reasonably short time... let's see, might be i'm gonna give it a try...) you have to rely on my narrating abilities. i'm sure i'm better at taking pictures. well, next time. just gotta remember to take my heavy camera along, i'm sure there will be plenty of mass-hysteria situations around me in the upcoming one month. right, forgot to mention. i happen to be leaving soon. but that's another story.

aha - an update

well, i have to admit it... my blog is kind of stalled... i try to keep it going on, but it's pretty evident it's just a series of pro forma attempts... don't know, too much stuff going on in my mind, too many variables and - weird enough - i'm so confused i don't even feel like writing about it. well, whatever...

at least i thought i could write an update about one of the good old topics of this blog, the AHa, ie. the Altes Hallenbad here in heidelberg, this inner pool from the 20's that was about to be turned first into a cultural centre and then into a bloody shopping mall. i don't have information for sure, but it looks like it's becoming none of them. apparently, they're using one of the rooms, the female bath, as a club (already saw a few posters advertising parties) and the male one, which is larger, for concerts, debates and all this kind of stuff. well i don't know whether it's just a temporary solution, and what's eventually going to come out of that place. have to admit i would have liked more the theatre-dance whatever solution, but still, this is the very less of two evils. and the idea that the nasty construction tycoon who's currently turning the city upside down, the idea that at least once he got to lost, well it's simply great. especially in the one place i really cared about.

more info at: www.alteshallenbad.de

magnolia, magnoliae

one of the best things of spring here around - and already fading away...

speechless (abruzzo 2009)

old and new fascisms

"There is no doubt (it is evident from the results) that the television is more authoritarian and repressive than any other means of communication in the world. In this respect, the fascist newspaper and the fascist slogans written on the walls of farms make us laugh as does the plough (sadly) when compared to the tractor. Fascism, I want to state it again, has not been actually able to even scratch the soul of the Italian folks: the new fascism, through the new means of communication and information (in particular, television), has not only scratched it, but it has ripped it apart, it has violated it and contaminated it for ever..."

1973

"I believe, I do believe, that the real fascism is the one sociologists have too cheerfully named "consumer society". A definition which appears harmless, purely representative. And yet it is not. If one takes a careful look at reality, and is especially good at reading around things, the landscape, urbanities and, above all, human beings, it is possible to see that the results of this perky consumer society are the results of a dictatorship, of a real and actual fascism.

(...)
Fascism had actually turned them into clowns, slaves, it may even have convinced them, but it didn't really touch them deep in their souls, in their own way of being. This new fascism, this consumer society, instead, has deeply transformed young people, touching them intimately, providing them with different feelings, life styles, ideas, cultural models. (...) It all means, in the end, that this "consumer society" is a dictatorial one. If the word fascism stands for the arrogance of power, then the "consumer society" has well accomplished fascism.

(...)
In my opinion, the issue is very complicated but also extremely clear: the true fascism, I've said it and I repeat it, is the one of the consumer society (...)
In my opinion, Italy these days is witnessing analogous processes to those happening in Germany at the dawn of nazism. Also in Italy nowadays one observes those phenomena of homologation and abandonment of the old rural, traditional values, typical of each particular region; such phenomena were the humus onto which the nazi Germany grew. (...) And Italy is exposed to this exact same danger."

1974

translated form P.P. Pasolini, Scritti corsari

(gosh, I've wanted to post these thoughts for almost a year now. sadly enough, they never get old - they actually get more and more true by the day)

moving on... seriously?!

unmoved

being outside of italy, it's hard to realise things only by reading the news online. especially when the only voices who are moved by several things happening these days, endangering more than usual our republic, are those of a few friends of mine, and of foreign press. right. last time i felt like that was this summer, when i found the most interesting comment about the ridiculous ending of the genoa 2001 trials on the guardian. this time it's not even the guardian, it's just bbc news. and what they write it's just so true. i just had a similar discussion with german friends yesterday and could not provide any answer to explain how we do things back there... and this feeling of shame and impotence gets stronger...

"Imagine the same in other countries, where the leader of the government was implicated in a massive bribery scam. You wouldn't be able to move outside the court for microphones and camera lenses.
But not in Italy.
Here, there is a quiet resignation among ordinary Italians that sailing close to the legal wind has become a trademark of their leader and the odd squall just shows he's human. It adds to his flamboyant appeal.
It seems that as long as he doesn't steer the great ship Italy towards the rocks, then Italians are prepared to forgive Mr Berlusconi."

the full article can be found here:
Italy unmoved by Berlusconi bribe case

the last comment makes me think... i used to believe that when things go really bad, and for a long while, then usually people start using their brains and stop accepting crap. but maybe it's the age, i don't know... just i think i'm not that optimistic anymore. not even if the great ship italy, or the remains of it, crashes towards the rocks...

Darwin Day: happy birthday Evolution!

"I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created parasitic wasps with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars."

Charles Darwin, Letter to Asa Gray, 1860

today, 200 years ago, Darwin was born, and 50 years later he wrote The origin of species and evolution was born. celebrate evolution against the scary threats of anti-science, creationism and whatever else, which are spreading by the day!
for more info www.darwinday.org

it ain't easy living as a parasite

almost forgot to post this:


it's by a totally sweet, (not only) klezmer band which i just discovered and saw live, nearly at the same time: daniel kahn & the painted bird. their last cd is called partisans and parasites, which reminded me (ok i know it's got nothing to do with it, but still) of the title that i gave to my container photos in the exhibit a while ago... good parasites, parasite goods... made me smile. actually, the whole show made me laugh a real lot, they're pretty good, and also made me want to go to berlin so badly, live there for a while. why berlin? well, they're american but they're living in berlin. which does not explain much. don't know, guess it was just an irrational thought. guess it's got something to do with the whole me in my head business. whatever. if you're ever in berlin tomorrow or on friday, go see them. trust me.

randomicity

it's snowing again. just saw it outside the window. i recently developed an aversion to snow, but still, seeing the flakes coming down in the street lamp light, it was kind of pretty. sweet. whatever. guess i'm still in a sentimental mood after the silly romantic comedy i just watched with my roommate. but we both reckoned it was not the silliness nor the romance that put us in such a mood. it was clearly jude law. well, sorry for this kind of appreciation, but still, we're girls, it's kind of allowed... and also, he's soo british, everybody knows i've got a freaking thing for british accent - what the hell am i doing here, btw?! realising only now i'm writing absolutely random stuff. guess i'm just confused. sort of. i've been writing my thesis - finally! - these past few weeks and didn't think much about, well, whatever... didn't have good old paranoid thoughts as i used to last year. hardly had any thoughts at all. but today was a totally pointless day, and now i can't stop thinking about the me in my head, and what she would do, and why i'm not doing so. the me in my head... well, whatever.

next time

"... Maybe it's just because there was no sun, and what entered from the big windows was a shitty day's gray. Maybe it's Tom Waits's fault. However, I ran away from the Sistine Chapel with two simple ideas in my mind. First: next time I go there I go at eight a.m., because that crowd is horrifying. Second: next time I am born an atheist, I'm going to do it in a country where those who believe in a God believe in a happy God."

from A. Baricco, The Sistine chapel, listening to Tom Waits - Barnum

critical times

awkward. i was just discussing a few days ago with people from london the fact that i feel like living in the outskirts of the empire. they were telling all kind of stories, e.g. about how they notice during everyday life the effect of the finance crisis, whereas to me, being in good old heidelberg and still embedded in the soft cage of academia, the crisis hasn't been much more than big titles in the news. ok, london-heidelberg is not much of a comparison, but still, kind of makes pretty clear the idea of detachment from society that we experience here. and then, after complaining about not seeing the effects of the crisis around me (what a selfish thought, but still) i ended up in front of one of my favourite stores here in town, which is also an art gallery and, incidentally, a link in the right column of this blog: the bourgeois pig, and they were dismantling it. i thought damn, here's the effect of the crisis. art clearly doesn't sell during such times, i thought. i went on their website and found the title of their last exhibit, which is in german but would sound like "art is dead, long live to art"... pretty clear message, isn't it? apparently they're just moving, though the lack of clear information makes it look more serious. the crisis has reached good old heidelberg. or maybe their rent deal was just over. whatever. good luck guys :)

guantanamera

have to admit i stole the title for this post from the web cover of an italian newspaper, il Manifesto... the news of the new US administration planning to close guantanamo bay asap has been in the air for a few days now, so i thought i'd write a note about it, since i posted about Mahvish Khan's book about the detainees this summer after seattle - damn, i still have to read the book by the way. anyway, i thought it's a good thing to notice, i mean lots of things won't ever change, but still looks like it's turning over a new leaf. good news for human rights. good news to hear especially today, being the international holocaust remembrance day... at least memory's there for a reason.

on thin ice

today something absolutely unusual happened in heidelberg. the river neckar, which goes through the city, got all frozen over. well, not all, but still. and it would make sense, since we've constantly been below zero for the whole past week. just, it doesn't. i've been living here four years now, almost to the day, and never in these four years have i seen the river freeze. it's because the water passes through the bars of a nuclear power plant (cool, isn't it? damn!) somewhere up along the course of the river, and it gets all heated up... at least that's what i've been told all the time. it doesn't freeze anymore, they say. one of these sentences that take you back to a different place in space and time. there isn't the good old fog anymore, here's another one i like, from the flatlands in the north of italy.
not true, apparently. i mean, the whole power plant heating the water story. urban legend? don't know, should maybe investigate. or not. just enjoy the show. surprises are always well received. the icy layer's pretty thin though. i wouldn't skate on it, as they did in the good old times. probably too thin even for the ducks...

where have all the ducks gone?

"The funny thing is, though, I was sort of thinking of something else while I shot the bull. I live in New York, and I was thinking about the lagoon in Central Park, down near Central Park South. I was wondering if it would be frozen over when I got home, and if it was, where did the ducks go. I was wondering where the ducks went when the lagoon got all icy and frozen over. I wondered if some guy came in a truck and took them away to a zoo or something. Or if they just flew away."

from J.D. Salinger, The catcher in the rye

the year of what?

i wanted to post about the year of astronomy since a few days. i was waiting for the year to begin, and then for a nice idea to pop into my mind so that i could present such a big event... but this 2009 started (or actually it was 2008 which ended) with a new, tragic conflict in the gaza strip. so i don't really want to blog about the year of astronomy. i don't really want to blog about anything right now. unfortunately, as i keep reading the news, i've run out of words (on this particular topic, i have to admit i have never had many). that's why, as many people are doing these days, i turn from my own thoughts to the words of some people more informed than i am, namely

guerrilla radio
the blog of vittorio arrigoni
the only italian correspondent left in gaza

it's in italian, sorry
(though some posts are translated in the comments)
but here's an analogous effort in english

tales to tell
the blog of sharon lock
an australian peace activist who's also in gaza

i apologise for not having dedicated the same space to other tragic events in the past months i've been blogging.
i will try, i promise.

let's stay human.