Heaven, Hell, Purgatory and the Seven Deadly Sins. These have been staple literary themes since, at least, Dante wrote the Divine Comedy in the fourteenth century. The American road trip is slightly more youthful, but perhaps no less worn as a conceit. It’s a brave writer then who overtly chooses all of the above as […]
Last Friday saw a much heralded episode of current affairs talk show Otto e Mezzo, focussing specifically on Intelligent Design and the (supposed) debate between proponents of creationism and evolution. It’s title was the lofty ‘inchiesta su dio’. The direction of the programme was interesting. First of all, as is often the case, on the […]
A New York Times article on Ireland being the exception to the stereotype of aging European societies (“The Irish, Young in �Old Europe,� Strain Schools and Housing”), confirms two hunches I have long harboured:1) About 35% of Irish girls under the age of 6 seemed to be called Ella, Ellie, Evie, or some other two-syllable […]
In the eighteenth century to be an eccentric you had to worship Satan, gamble, go hot air ballooning, accidentally kill someone, marry a close relative, flee from creditors, be addicted to opium, write and privately publish a pornographic novel, discover one of the elements and have a star, a species of plant or a national […]
Hopefully the last posting about Luciano Moggi, ex sports director of Juventus. Almost simultaneously with the publication of the last posting, on sports ethics, news reports came in that Moggi’s scheduled lecture to students in a school in Agropoli has been cancelled. The reason? Apparently threats had been received by the school, and thus they […]
Dziennik (26th January) has revealed that the nefarious soviets had atomic bombs on Polish territory. It’s a good thing no one knew about this at the time: their presence would have made Poland an obvious target in any European war. On an entirely unrelated note, an American general calling himself Henry A. Obering has assured […]
Who is to blame for all this snow? This is the question which has been tormenting journalists in local newspapers for the last few days as Poland gets a belated flurry of snow action. Who can we blame for the gigantic tail backs and traffic jams, for the hours wasted by drivers in their cars, […]
Anyone who has stared with unseemly fascination at Charles Minard’s famous graphic charting the near-annihilation of Napoleon’s Grande Arm�e during its ignominious retreat from Moscow is likely to appreciate IBM’s new project, Many Eyes. It’s still early days, but the site provides you with a very simple way of transforming datafiles into “visualizations” that provide […]
The Economist, in a story about migration in Europe (the greatest wave since the end of the Second World War), includes an anecdote that, if accurate, provides an alarming insight into the intellectual skills of those occupying the lower tiers of the British economy:”ROBERT, the Polish-born head of a group of British removal men, can […]