Thursday, April 29, 2010

doomed (we'd better be)/39

Voyeuristic ornithophilia is your unconfessed sin? Spy the secret life of birds directly from your TV with a bird house with camera & microphone. Choose among black/white, color, wireless, different sizes. here. (e grazie infinite)

Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

reproductive strategies

When spring comes, deciduous magnolias explode with a flower on each twig, while their fresh, light green leaves have to dig their way through all those overwhelming petals.





When spring comes, evergreen magnolias keep looking like the rest of the year, with their huge, glossy, thick, dark green canopies. But spring has come, and their handful of fragile flowers must be there, concealed by those overprotective leaves.

Ever since I was a child, spotting one has always been a rare and pleasing moment. It looked like we shared a secret, me and the tree.

Sunday, April 25, 2010

today

such a spring would be worth any winter

Friday, April 23, 2010

'cause I, I built my life around you


First act of the new governor of Campania: stop the demolition of illegal buildings and settlements, to be enforced starting next week. here.

In Naples there's no real favela or bidonville, with the exclusion of some gypsy camps and some overcrowded informal buildings, mostly occupied by illegal immigrants. Still, there are a few areas that can be considered slums, such as decayed central historical areas and public housing residential peripheries. And there is, all around the urban centre, a whole city that has been built in the 1970s and 1980s, mostly on agricultural land, in violation of existing urban plans, composed of small constructions or single-family homes.

The majority of these buildings are not really informal. They are good-quality houses, that might even respect building standards, mostly built by firms connected to the Camorra for the local lower-middle class or for bigger entrepreneurs. They are illegal, because they have been built despite the land zonation and in the lack of sufficient infrastructures and public services. They basically are a form of investment, extremely efficient as a means of cleaning money from illegal sources, that relies on the fact that a local or national government will eventually be issuing an amnesty, and transform a construction lacking a planning permission into a perfectly legal (and way more valuable) property.

The population in the region has gone up by roughly 120,000 units since 2001, and, in the meanwhile, 60,000 illegal buildings have been built. They are not there to satisfy a fundamental right. They are pure business. And a rentable one, since they allow the externalization of a series of environmental and social costs on the rest of the community. I get a cheap house, or a good profit, or a low rent, somebody else (or even me and my family) in a not-so-uncertain future, will have to bear the consequences, in terms of poorer access to public services, lower environmental quality, loss of amenities and property value, social instability due to criminal organizations' increasing power, economic damages, injuries, death.

Landslide and earthquake risk, in particular, are positively related to urbanization rates, especially in areas where the constructions are not properly planned. That is to say that communities with high percentages of illegal housing are likely to suffer more victims and damages from events of a given intensity. And in the case of landslides, environmental degradation associated with urbanization is also a factor in increasing the frequency of the events themselves.

Campania, as a region, occupies 4,5% of the Italian surface, and has experienced about 14,5% of the landslide disasters ever recorded in the country, which probably make it the one national hydrogeological risk hotspot, with a notable concentration of deadly landslide events in the Naples province (red dots in the map). It has been the stage of the costliest earthquake ever recorded in Europe and will sooner or later have to face the inadequacy of the Vesuvius emergency plan, largely due to the area's over-urbanization and insufficiency of infrastructures.

The announced stop to the demolition of illegal buildings, which possibly preludes to a real amnesty, is not going to make things any better. It might actually encourage people to build even more, and even worse. Sadly enough, is not always possible to directly connect the dots between such an administrative act and its single consequences, and have politicians sued for their political responsibilities when a farmer is killed by a mudflow, or a journalist by a bullet. But such a way of managing the territory, being aware of the environmental and social situation of our area, are simply premeditated crimes. And a telling start of a new mandate.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

doomed (we'd better be)/37


US$ 30 for a loooong baseball hat with a curtain all around it, a hook at the end to put your phone/mp3 reader, and a magnification screen to get a movie theater experience. Perfect to watch stuff outdoors, get some privacy, be completely unaware everybody around is probably making fun of you. Here.

little april showers

here. via.

hierarchy of needs



grazie J.

parole in musica/3

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

island-mountain glacier


Information is beautiful gets the CO2 emission figures for the volcano wrong, their graph goes viral. Apologies and new visual here - way less extreme than the first.

I have the impression people coming back from overland trips happy for the adventure, challenge, poetry of an out-of-time journey will go back on a plane as soon as the authorities allow it. Still, I'm wondering if the landslide of offers on carpooling websites will increase in the long term the number of people using this kind of transport, maybe for shorter distances.

Whoa pictures of the volcano, here.

WMO says the effect of the eruption on global warming will be "very insignificant" (too small, too low, too sparse), and could only affect the regional climate if it went on for years. here.

It's sad to notice, though, how financial crisis, depressions, natural disasters are among our biggest achievements in terms of climate change mitigation. The fact that we could consider these disruptions as success stories is the biggest evidence for the unsustainability of our economies.

Friday, April 16, 2010

ecco, appunto

green/orange

Nel frattempo, Bossi dichiara che la Lega si prenderà le banche del Nord, perché il popolo sovrano lo vuole. A me viene un po' nostalgia degli olandesi.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

pezze a colore


On Monday, speaking from Chile, Cardinal Tarciso Bertone, the Vatican Secretary of State - basically, the Pope's prime minister, said that psychiatrists and sociologists have proved that pedophilia is not related to celibacy, rather to homosexuality.

After the immediate and not surprising reaction of various GLBT associations, even the French Government has officially defined his declaration unacceptable. Trying to make things look slightly better, today the Holy See spokesperson declared that Bertone was referring to the specific issue of pedophilia cases inside the Church.

Provided that I obviously don't believe gays are horny pigs more likely to be pedophiles than straights, and that I am not sure wether allowing the catholic priests to marry would actually solve the problem, what I really don't get is how the psychiatrists and sociologists the guy was mentioning have denied any relation between pedophilia and celibacy, since the specimens studied should all be consecrated "with undivided heart to the Lord".

How about giving a frank thought, for once, to the fact that the vocation-seminary-ministerial practice cycle, as a system, is producing a disproportionate amount of criminals? How about a mea culpa?

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Thursday, April 1, 2010

ingiustizie elevate a diritto

Emma Bonino, a member of the Radical Party and former Italian Minister, EU Commissioner, divorce and abortion activist, upon being defeated last weekend in the elections for governor of Lazio, declared she lost from a true alliance between Berlusconi and the Catholic Church.

A couple of days before the elections, Cardinal Angelo Bagnasco, currently president of the Italian Episcopal Conference, invited catholic electors to vote pro-life parties, with the clear aim of influencing the elections in Lazio and in Piemonte, where Berlusconi's candidates were opposing strong pro-choice figures, Emma Bonino and Mercedes Bresso. The issue is especially relevant because health is, in Italy, a sector of regional competence, and the introduction of the abortion pill is currently being discussed both at the political and administrative level. Roberto Cota, the Lega Nord candidate who defeated Bresso in Piemonte, as a discreet "thank you for your support", few hours upon his election declared the pills will "rot in warehouses".

Emma Bonino also said she considered this alliance to be legitimate, blaming her defeat rather on the disproportionate coverage given by the media to Berlusconi's position, and to the complete absence of space for its critics. Still, although absolutely unsurprising, Bagnasco's last intervention has probably been the most explicit indication the Church has ever given before an election.

I am really upset by the hypocritical way the Church continues to openly support Berlusconi and his comrades (variously involved in sexual scandals, modern kinds of family, rituals to pagan gods, violent acts against migrants, etc), but I don't feel there's much more to do about it than to remark such contradictions, or try to drive the people's attention to different subjects.

In the end, it is just another lobby, and has the right to speak. Politicians and electors have the right to follow. But I assume it speaks everywhere in the world, and not everywhere is heard, not to mention followed. Does really the scarce 30% of Italian population (including children, non-voting and progressive or even critical catholics) that actually is faithful make a difference? Or are most of us, even those who couldn't care less in the day-to-day life, still trying not to give up all hope of eternal salvation and making their best on Christmas, Easter, and political elections? Or are they really convinced abortion and gay rights are the meteorites that will destroy our civilization?

Oh, by the way, would it help if the home page of "la Repubblica" didn't look like this? Breaking news: pro-life declaration by the Pope. The big picture: 2 interventions by his PRs.