Giancarlo Niccolai

The end of free speech in Italy

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 02:37:07 -0800

Today, in Italy, in the country where the prime minister left arm and founder of its Party is under trial for participation in Mafia organizations, and where the Prime Minister is under trial for judge corruption, for the FIRST TIME IN THE WORLD, network service providers have been condemned to jail because of a video leaked on the network they are in charge of administrate by a user.

Original article (in Italian).

Not the user that leaked the video. Which would be terrible enough. But the providers. In this case, Google itself.

Not even the Iranian government, not even the Myanmar government arrived to this point. They prosecuted the publishing of the ideas, but not the media through which those ideas was published.

An immediate, formal and firm protest of the world internet community is absolutely in order, to avoid that this happens also in your country.

The fact that this happened in Italy, a country where free speech is formally granted by our Constitution and ensured by a rich body of ordinary laws, is a warn and admonishment for all the "free" and "democratic" countries in the world. This can happen even in your country, and even if your country consider itself a Home for free speech.

Fight back now, or it will be too late.

Please, send a mail to the President of the Italian Republic, which has the power to lessen the effectiveness of this sentence in our legal system:

Republic President's webmail.

If other governments think they can do that because Italy did that, it will be a dark day for us all. Stop this from happening.

Shuffling cards

Fri, 19 Feb 2010 01:43:00 -0800

Unexpected events can even be pleasant.

Yesterday, I've been asked to bring myself to the local station of the Finance Guard, for a one-time control applied randomly on new firms started last year.

Even if it's just a formal control on new-born firms, to prevent empty cover-up names to be legally provided to criminals, one may think it's quite a nuisance to loose a workday and bring your invoices into a police station for a check. And usually it is.

But contrarily to my expectations, I found the people at the office so empathic and warm that I had one of my most pleasurable morning since long. I met up with a officer being both skilled and loving I.T., so we entered immediately in a sympathetic mode.

As I was leaving the station, we took some time to talk about various arguments. As we talked, I wondered about the nice time we had, and realized that even if I had been forced to stop my restless work for half a day, that had been good indeed.

We run, run, rush to do things and never stop looking around, we're so dug into our daily troubles that we rarely see what's around, or in front of us. I felt so refreshed by the meeting that I had a feeling like taking a deep breath after a long run. And I felt like having found a new friend too.

Shuffling cards, meeting new people, going in new places, can really be good.

If there is a man in a world...

Sun, 7 Feb 2010 16:58:18 -0800

... that makes me proud of being part of the mankind, it is this man.

Tiziano Terzani, he's not a master, as he says, he's not a Guru. He's just a man who lived, and who understood. Very probably, in another place, in another time, they would have called him a Buddah, an Enlightened.

He wrote books, as he was a journalist. In this interview, he was dying of a cancer, and he says he's happy of his life, and of the incredible opportunity he had been given; last but not least, the opportunity to die serenely, now that he is 66. Was he ill at a younger age, say at 30, he would have not be so happy to die, he says, but now, now that it has fulfilled his life, now that he has an equilibrium, now that he's in peace with himself... he says he and his "hosts", his cancer, will live and die together.

His last sentence in this video, one of his advices (not teaching, he never wanted to teach), is: if you find a fork in the road, where one road goes down, and the other goes up, get the one that goes up. You'll always find yourself in a better place.

And he was from Tuscany. As he's a man of the world, maybe I shouldn't say that, but hearing his adventures, his knowing, his wisdom in my own tongue, with that irony and views and happiness and life-force that are so much imbued in my homeland and so well know across the world, gives me a special kind of feeling.

Falcon aged to 1500 commits!

Fri, 5 Feb 2010 11:20:45 -0800

Cheers for Falcon!

We have just committed version 1500:



gian@hplin:~/Progetti/falcon/core$ svn commit -m "Removed unneeded troublesome dependency"

Trasmetto      manpages/CMakeLists.txt

Trasmissione dati .

Commit della Revisione 1500 eseguito.

Well, not a great news, but it was cool to cheer at it. With my :-).

The day of memory

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 04:45:36 -0800

Italy is slowly but steadily falling towards a new form of Fascism. As Primo Levi said, in the 60's, "it's today's Fascism, that is just missing the power to enforce itself to return being what it was, that is, the consecration of privilege and inequality".

To prevent this from happen again, there is just one way. Remember what happened, what caused fascism to raise and what it leaded to. And the horror it caused.

A person I know asked me, "why are we still re-vising what happened more than 60 years ago; why should be pity for a so distant fact, and for people of other races".

Because, I replied, there is one race I know: human. The people who suffered in the laghers, the people who was jailed and killed by Fascism and its descendant Nazism, wasn't of "a race", they wasn't a "kind". They was me. They all was me.

And I don't want this sort of things to happen to me, never again.

Japanese Paranormal & CICAP

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 04:03:16 -0800

I proposed myself for a voluntary cooperation with CICAP, the "the Italian Committee for the Investigation of Claims on the Paranormal". They were searching for translators willing to lend a hand in translating material from "less common languages", like French, German and the like. So I wondered if they would have been interested in translations from Japanese.

The talk went on a bit, and a general interest on the relationships between Japan and paranormal things emerged. So, I started a bit of an investigation on the field.

It is well known that Japanese people have a traditional attraction towards supernatural and paranormal talks. While the first "gothic literature" in Europe is generally placed at the beginning of the '800, and individuated in works as "The Castle of Otranto" and "Wuthering Heights", Japanese literature is two-way bound with supernatural themes since the first records, and theatre pieces like "Yotsuya Ghost Story" produced in the early '800s was counting on an already solid tradition.

This may depend on the shamanic roots of the early Japanese culture, which changed into a more organized cult during the passage out of the pre-historic period into the early Japan as a central state emerged around 600 AD, but whose founding principles was never totally forgotten.

In the beginning, the search for people and associations seriously approaching paranormal phenomenon and claims of supernatural activities had been harder than I thought. I will digress on this aspect as my research progress.

However, I've been able to get in touch with an amazing set of fellow researchers, forming the ASIOS. The relatively young association (born in 2007) had already performed a quantity of investigations, promoted a series of books on scientific investigation (and dismantling) of "paranormal facts" and published a collective book called "The solving of mysteries". The president of the association, Mr. Honjou Tatsuya, replied to my first contact letter with an unexpectedly warm welcome.

I am so starting my journey in to the Japanese mysteries and the Japanese way to solve them. Isn't this exciting? :-)

If you have any news about weird things, mysteries, supernatural phenomenon and the like, and researchers on this field in Japan, I'd love you to send me comments on this article or mail me via my contact form.

Thanks!

Stream of light

Wed, 9 Dec 2009 12:50:24 -0800

I have already praised Suga Shikao skills in composing, lyrics writing and playing music. Yet, this metropolitan poetry is still very surprising.

In his song "Hikari no kawa", Shikao talks about her former lover passing him by on another car, in a traffic jam. It's the occasion to rethink to the past, and why it didn't quite work out, and to fantasize about the similarity of their story and what's happening as he loses her in the queue. And there's even space to think about not just the "story of them two", but about love and affection in general, as we live in cities where we become mechanized animals, half flesh and blood and half chips and gears. And all of this, without exaggerations, or epic conclusions; just told as it is, felt as it's felt, daily as it is. With the "stream of light" being just the row of car lights, and somehow, at the same time, being also much, much more. In perfect Shikao's unique style.

光の川
Hikari no kawa
Stream of light
Fiume di luce

Music & lyrics: Shikao Suga

少し動き出した週末の渋滞の中で
sukoshi ugokidashita shuumatsu no juutai no naka de
Nel traffico del fine settimana che si muoveva piano
While in the little-moving week-end traffic jam

となりをゆっくり過ぎる　車に目がとまった
tonari wo yukkuri sugiru kuruma ni me ga tomatta
mi è caduto l'occhio sull'auto che passava lentamente di fianco.
I gazed upon the car that was slowly passing by my side.

助手席に確かに　君がいたように見えた
joshuseki ni tashika ni kimi ga ita you ni mieta
Sul sedile del passeggero, mi pare proprio di aver visto te
I thought I saw you sitting on the passenger's seat

見まちがうわけはないんで　心がざわついた
mimachigau wake wa nai 'n da kokoro ga zawatsuita
è impossibile che mi sia sbagliato il cuore mi è balzato in petto.
I can't have been wrong my heart jumped in my throat.

---

君の姿を確かめようとしたけど
kimi no sugata wo tashikameyou to shita kedo
Avrei voluto accertarmi che fossi davvero tu, ma
I tried to see if it was really you, but

ぼくらをむすぶ距離は　はなれてしまうばかりで…
bokura wo musubu kyori wa hanarete shimau bakari de...
la distanza che ci separava non faceva che aumentare...
the distance between us just kept growing

何か叫ぼうと身を乗り出したけれど
nani ka sakebou to mi wo noridashita keredo
mi è balenata l'idea di gridare qualcosa, ma
I thought I could yell out something, but

ぼくにはたったひとつの　言葉さえうかばなかった
boku ni tatta hitotsu no kotoba sae ukabanakatta
non mi è venuta in mente nemmeno una parola.
not a single word came across my mind.

---

ひくく嘲笑うようなバイクの音とともに
hikuku asawarau you na baiku no oto to tomo ni
Assieme al suono di una moto simile a una bassa risata di scherno
Your car was now moving much forward,

君の車はもうずっと　先に進んでしまった
kimi no kuruma mou zutto saki ni susunde shimatta
la tua auto, ormai, era andata molto più avanti.
together with a low growling motorbike laugh.

ぼくらはこの世界で　孤独を飲み込むたびに
bokura wa kono sekai de kodoku wo nomikomu tabi ni
Noi, in questo mondo, mentre venivamo inghiottiti dalla solitudine
As we were getting drawn in solitude

苦笑いのふりをして　大人になろうとしたんだ
nigawarai no furi wo shite otona ni narou to shita 'n da
facendo finta di sorridere amaro, decidemmo di fare gli adulti.
trying to fake a bitter smile, we decided to grow adult.

---

君の心を救いたいと願ったけど
kimi no kokoro wo sukuitai to negatta kedo
Avevo desiderato di salvare il tuo cuore, ma
I wished I could save your heart, but

ぼくらはその涙の　ぬぐい方もわからなくて…
bokura wa sono namida no nuguikata mo wakaranakute ...
ci eravamo dimenticati persino di come si faceva ad asciugare quelle lacrime ...
we forgot even how to wipe away those tears...

君の姿を追いかけようとしたけど
kimi no sugata wo oikakeyou to shita kedo
Ho provato a inseguire la tua figura, ma
I tried to chase your shape, but

信号でぼくの車は　人の波にとまってしまった
shingo de boku no kuruma wa hito no nami ni tomatte shimatta
al semaforo, la mia macchina si fermò fra la folla.
the traffic light blocked my car in the crowd.

---

途切れた願いは消えてしまうのではなくて
togireta negai wa kieteshimau no de wa nakute
I desideri interrotti non svaniscono per il solo fatto di esserlo
Broken wishes don't disappear just because they get broken,

ぼくらはその痛みで　明日を知るのかもしれない
bokura wa sono itami de asu wo shiru no kamoshirenai
e, forse, è grazie a questi dolori che ci prepariamo al domani.
and maybe it's through those pains that we know the future.

すべての祈りが輝きはしないけれど…
subete no inori ga kagayaki wa shinai keredo
Non tutte le preghiere risplendono, ma
Not every prayer shine but

車はいつの間にか　光の川に消えてしまった
kuruma wa itsu no ma ni ka hikari no kawa ni kiete shimatta
la tua auto, a un certo punto, scomparve nel fiume di luce.
at some point, your car faded in the stream of light.

Comments saving your day

Tue, 17 Nov 2009 01:39:33 -0800

This comments in an intricate code I am in charge to check really saved my day



	TopicLock itLT = LockTopic (Tpc);	// lock topic

	LockCache(); // lock cache

... in the sense that I am gonna laugh for the rest of the day.

Night theme

Thu, 5 Nov 2009 09:17:38 -0800

I have recently bought a new classic guitar, an Alvaro 4000-EF (it's hand-crafted; you won't find it in the on-line catalog). It has an excellent sound and a very sensible microphone-pickup pair, which seems to be able to capture even the most subtle resonances.

I composed a small, slow tune exposing some of the resounding frequencies of this little marvel: Notturno sulla seconda corda.

Other than having a top notch professional sound quality, this guitar is also extremely playable; it just requires gentle touches for the barré to hold, and it's pretty forgiving about light pressures in difficult positions. Also, it responds pretty linearly to string touch; althoug it's easy to play it piano, it's easy to get clean fortissimos, and the expression range comes out pretty docile at the touch of the right hand nails.

Just, I got to find "its strings". Every guitar has its own strings. The "quality" of the strings is not always directly resulting in better sound on a given guitar; some even famous guitar find their mating strings in poor quality, low duration strings. It's a trial and error process.

My wife fights back

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 15:40:49 -0700

Tonight, after dinner...

Wife: "Dear, would you please brew me a coffee?"
Me: "No way."
W: "Oh, please, dear!"
M: "Got to run, I am writing..."
W: "It's a matter of life and death... and not mine."
M: "... I am brewing your coffee."