O Rhaeto-Romans, what the hell were you thinking?

Largest ski resort in Switzerland, highest city in Europe, widely recommended for lung disease patients, host of the only European Bandy Championship ever played, in 1913, inspiration for painters and writers throughout its history. Today, May 31, 2010, I am in Davos. And it's snowing.

VIPs

Today I've met a person who comes out as the 6th suggestion on google if you type the first 4 letters of her first name. If you type in mine, you get "lorem ipsum" and "l'Oréal".

two good locks, all the time

what goes around comes around

My new year's resolution for 2010 was: relativize the concept of "ridiculous". This involves finding a dignity in any kind of harmless activity, as long as there are people who are enthusiastically willing to practice it.
Therefore, I'm proud to report that the 2010 World Boomerang Championship is starting tomorrow, the 28th of May, in Rome.
Here the website, here the rulebook, here the access plan.

lei era tutto ciò a cui il mio silenzio era dedicato

che bello il lupo che si commuove leggendo le sue cose.


Frate Zitto (Parte 1) from StefanoBenni.it on Vimeo.


Frate Zitto (Parte 2) from StefanoBenni.it on Vimeo.

esta crise

Esta crise – iniciada em 2007 – está a fazer com que se desmoronem muitos princípios liberais ou neo-liberais: parece que afinal o mercado não se regula sozinho, que pode colapsar-se, e então, oh, há que chamar o estado… Está claro: privatizam-se os lucros, as perdas assumimo-las todos. Parece que esta crise acabará com um regresso ao estado perante um liberalismo que se vendia como a salvação, o fim da história… Embora também possa acontecer que se mude alguma coisa para que tudo continue na mesma. O capitalismo tem a pele dura. Aqui.

oktapodi

oh!

google, 21th May, 2010

In case you didn't notice, today google has been acting like this.

doomed (we'd better be)/special edition

Tired of feeding, brushing, and cleaning after your horse? Try Segway Polo!
Here the website of the International Segway Polo Association.
Here a summary of the official rules.

parole senza musica

number 3
qui tutti gli interventi su "la musica"
qui il mio

(bandit)

It is quite clear that LEGOman finally managed to infiltrate the Skype emoticons.

password: character

It says I'm a Bifur. DIY, here.

priority for action 4

Counterintuitive as it may sound, I think the European Commission's decision to use 70 billion € originally budgeted for post-disaster emergency and reconstruction interventions to avoid the collapse of a few national economies might be the best option available for actually reducing disaster risk.

so many people under the sun

that if you google "name of an album" (or an artist) + mediafire, you're very likely to find a direct download link.

pédagogie des catastrophes

The Gulf of Mexico oil spill could become the worst environmental disaster on the records. 800.000 liters oil are leaking from the collapsed pipe every day, devastating the most productive marine fishery in the US and one of the most important touristic destination in the country. It is also possible that the oil will be caught in the Gulf stream and pollute a much wider area. It is a major calamity, which has completely overwhelmed the response capacity of both BP and the US administration, and might have longer-lasting consequences than any hurricane ever happened in the area, by shutting down the whole region's economy for years, and destroying the functioning of the local environment.

Fox News might have been a little bit extreme in blaming the collapse to a deliberate sabotage, Texas Governor Rick Perry instead claimed that the oil rig collapse be an "Act of God" (a man-made disaster!). Then changed his mind and called it a "technical failure". While the first two definitions are obviously an attempt to deny any responsibility by BP, calling what happened a "technical failure" is part a more subtle strategy.

Drilling 1500 m underwater a 6000 m deep hole is a challenge for our most advanced technology. It is risky, and can result in unpredictable, or unavoidable, events. BP might be found guilty of not having installed an extra security switch (compulsory in Brazil and Norway) in case the main one fails, of having downplayed the emergency in the beginning, of having reacted slowly or ineffectively. And it might be fined or have to pay the cleaning and the damages.

But what's really at stake for the company, as well as for any other major player in this field, is not to have to install an extra switch on each pipe or even to be fined for US$ 16 billion to repay the losses. These guys' annual income is higher than that. They wouldn't go out of business if the environmental or security regulations changed. What they really need is to avoid the deep cultural change that events like this could cause.

The Exxon Valdez and the Prestige disasters, the Sidoarjo mud flow, as well as swine flu, avian influenza, E. Coli or Salmonella outbreaks from contaminated food in the US, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, even natural disasters like Katrina or the earthquakes in Haiti and China are presented and elaborated in our memory as unique situations that have different technical causes, that a different technical solutions might have avoided. That will never happen again, once the technology is available and the laws are respected.

But they collectively are a demonstration of the hidden costs of our development. Environmental degradation, social inequalities, reduced health and security levels, are all consequences of the same economic processes aimed at making available on a large scale any sort of cheap consumer goods. As long as we consider this kind of consumption a fundamental right of ours, the very basis of our lifestyle, of our culture, we keep reproducing the conditions that lead to such disasters, making cheap fossil fuels and cheap labor desirable, and strong environmental and security regulations, social services and welfare deleterious. We choose to maintain a system in which somebody else is subsidizing part of our well-being with his own.

These choices might not be conscious. Externalities are mostly invisible, either hidden from our sight or so diluted we can't really realize their existence. Disasters (both man-made and natural) can be useful in revealing them, uncovering some of the indirect implications of the ways societies work. Of how we decide to produce and consume stuff, to distribute resources and profits. Of where the weaknesses of our system are. Disasters like this can be a wake-up call for the people.

But it is fundamental to let such an event speak. Calling it, telling it a certain way, means giving it a certain meaning, and it's not a neutral process. Isolating each situation, making it one more different accident in a disorganized series of technical failures, might work just fine in preventing the very same event from happening again. It surely works perfectly in hiding the need for a more substantive, radical change.

sean sean