BBC Archivi - Keep Calm and Drink Coffee

NEW EMPORIO ARMANI CAMPAIGN

Jun 25, 2022 | FASHION, ISN'T IT IRONIC?, WHO CARES

New Emporio Armani fall winter 2022-2023 campaign: have I already said I like King Giorgio? Claro que si!

Have I already posted an Emporio Armani fashion show? Claro que si!

And it is also clear that I have a particular fondness for Armani‘s gray tones and its unmistakable timeless lines, just like the cut of the pants that open this video

These images immediately made me think of one of the sequences I have loved since I was a child

How do you see yourself?

Do you have a four-legged friend who looks like you?

How did you meet each other?

Do you also walk symbiotically?

Photographer Gerrad Gethings, who specializes in such portraits, has published a series of shots centered on this very concept.

A BBC article describes this phenomenon called canine mini-me based on studies by Professor Michael Roy.

Forty-five dogs and their owners were photographed separately and judges were shown one owner, that owner’s dog, and another dog, with the task of choosing the true match. The results were consistent with a selection report: observers were only able to match purebred dogs to their owners, and there was no relationship between the ability to match a person with his or her pet and the length of time they had lived together. The ability to match people and pets did not appear to be based on any simple matching of traits (e.g., size or hairiness). The results suggest that when people choose a pet, they look for one that, on some level, looks like them, and when they get a purebred, they get what they want.

What are your thoughts on this?

Among the main characters in the Emporio Armani video is a German dachshund, like our Rocky: my parents adopted him because the “human” he was living with wanted to get rid of him.

Rocky was afraid to do what was his “job” that is, to get into dens, and for that reason he was beaten.

Unfortunately, he was forever left with an extreme distrust of people, but with us he was very sweet.

Here, maybe I could say that shades of gray are only beautiful when it comes to clothing, what do you say?

NO UNESCO HERITAGE

Mar 31, 2022 | CULTURE, WHO CARES

No UNESCO heritage for espresso: the application was rejected. Passed. Not allowed. What is the most correct wording?

It is certainly more kind to say that the candidacy The Italian Espresso Coffee between culture, ritual, sociality and literature in the emblematic communities from Venice to Naples was not admitted by the committee by the Council Director of the Italian National Commission for Unesco, who preferred the Opera.

Of course we all agree that the art of opera is worth it.

But the coffee just “wasn’t there?” Pity.

However, it remains a heritage for us.

At this point our thoughts turn to the sensational rejections.

The first that comes to mind is the famous Meryl Streep audition for King Kong.

Here she tells us directly, but above all divinely I would say

Or we can quote Fazi Editore and the interview with Elido Fazi: Gore Vidal pointed out Dan Brown to me. His book got there six months before it was released in America. We read it absent-mindedly and didn’t do anything about it.

In other words, we can say that “reading absent-mindedly” harms.

Whenever I think of underestimates I am reminded of Shirey MacLaine and the recurring sentence in The Last Word movie “The Kinks are the most underrated band ever.”

In fact, many were surprised by the choice of David Gilmour who in a 2003 BBC interview indicated Waterloo Sunset as the first of the songs he would choose a desert island.

Do you want to tell me some anecdotes too?

Or maybe you also have a personal experience, of rejection or even better of revenge?

Indeed, more than revenge, I’d like to talk about rebirth

Being born is not enough. It is to be reborn that we are born. Everyday. Pablo Neruda

What do you say?

PETROV

Dec 3, 2021 | WORLD

Stanislav Evgrafovič Petrov: not everyone knows this name, yet it is the name of a man to whom universal gratitude should go.

It was 1983, the year in which ARPANET adopted the TCP / IP protocol that has become the modern Internet, year in which Microsoft releases the first version of Word for MS-DOS, but also year in which Reagan gives the famous speech which launches the Strategic Defense Initiative: SDI, more commonly known as “space shield” which some mass media have also renamed Star Wars.

A speech based on the need to face a possible nuclear attack by the Soviet Union which ended as follows:
My fellow Americans, tonight we’re launching an effort which holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There will be risks, and results take time. But I believe we can do it. As we cross this threshold, I ask for your prayers and your support.

On the other side of the world, likewise, they were ready to intercept any missile through the OKO satellite system, implemented with a new software: Krokus (which in my mind I visualize as a flower).

What’s more, the tension created by Reagan in calling Russia an “empire of evil,” on September 1, a Boeing departing from New York to Seoul is shot down for “trespassing into Soviet airspace.”

In this climate of extreme early warning, we arrive at September 26, a day that began just fourteen minutes when something happens that could cause a terrible chain reaction.

In front of the monitor in the Serpukhov 15 base there is an analyst, called to replace a colleague, when the system signals a missile and all the alarms start to sound.

In the following minutes the anxiety drops along with four other signals for a total of five missiles directed towards the Soviet Union.

What would you have done? How would you have reacted?

Fortunately for us, Stanislav Petrov was able to keep calm and above all he decided to follow his instinct, avoiding sending a call that would have proved fatal.

The verification on the radar in fact does not detect anything and shortly before the expected impact Krokus cancels the signals, resuming its normal operation.

Krokus was perhaps more sensitive to Nature than to technology since subsequent investigations revealed the cause of the “glare:” reflections of sunlight on clouds.

Molniya: Молния in Russian means lightning bolt and is the name given to a series of satellites, which were launched into a highly elliptical orbit to allow them to reach regions of the far north of the country.

These satellites that September 26 are aligned with the sun and the earth on which the rays fall perpendicular to the equinox and this causes deception, so much so as to go down in history as the Autumn Equinox Incident.

Fate also wanted Petrov to “align”, who should not have been on duty.

In an interview with Time, Petrov says, “If I had sent my report up the chain of command, nobody would have said a word against it.“

But I would like to show you these short statements on the BBC

More than the words I was struck by the images.
A simple man.
Very few things.
The only companion cigarettes.
And those three books.

I cannot erase the image of those books from my mind: aged like him, thin, yellowed, lying down, lonely.

Not being able to read them, I try to read humanity on his face.

The ability to understand the possibility of error, to contemplate fallibility, to accept doubt and to follow instinct.

And I hope I can learn.

A film was also made on the story of Stanislav Petrov: The man who saved the world

Have you ever seen it?

IT’S TIME FOR ANOTHER POIROT POLL

Mar 20, 2021 | BOOKS, MOVIES

Luckily it was reported to me in time and for this I thank you: otherwise I would have missed the vision of John Malkovich in the role of Hercule Poirot.

Have you seen it?
It aired on Paramount: a BBC Series from the original title ABC murders based on the homonymous book by Queen Agatha Christie.

The first major change is the removal of Captain Hastings in favor of the introduction of Inspector Crome played by none other than Rupert Grint.

But perhaps it is the references to Poirot’s past that result in a “truly unsettling” ending (I quote verbatim) that clash more than the character we have come to know through the books.

In reality the atmosphere itself is completely dark and in itself I like it.

The problem is that I didn’t feel like I was “seeing” an Agatha Christie mystery.

But I know very well that I am not sufficiently clear-headed and objective on the subject, so I ask you: what do you think?

To me, John Malkovich’s Poirot seemed folded in on itself, there is no famous pride of his Belgian being, there are no characteristic pince-nez nor the bearing that I have always imagined.

It is true that the expressions that John Malkovich manages to give are very suitable for this more intimate and humanly introspective dimension.

One thing is certain: the poll on the favorite Poirot should be re-launched, or not?

THE BUTTERFLY EFFECT

May 9, 2020 | BOOKS, ITALY, MEDIA, MOVIES, SCIENCE, WORLD

“It is sometimes said that the flapping of a butterfly’s wings in one part of the world can cause a hurricane on the other side of the globe.”
This quote comes from the 2004 film The Butterfly Effect and is inspired by a theory taken up and debated in numerous areas.
Once again, as happened for the War of the Worlds: the inspiration comes from a science fiction novel, it is in fact Ray Bradbury who in his Sound of thunder attributes to the proper death of a butterfly during a journey through time, a variation of future events:

Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling,
“No, it can’t be. Not a little thing like that. No!”
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.

Another coincidence, also in this case the story was broadcast by the BBC in 2011: here if you want to find the podcast (butterfly from about 35 minutes but I would advise you to listen to it all if you have time).
The butterfly symbol was taken up by Edward Lorenz, mathematician and meteorologist professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in his 1963 paper for the New York Academy of Science and later in a 1979 lecture that went down in history.
In general, the butterfly effect belongs to quantum physics and more precisely to the basis of chaos theory.
Chaos is the most congenial aspect to me, but actually I didn’t want to talk about this … not this time, at least.
Antonietta Gatti is perhaps known to most as “the wife of” despite her respectable curriculum. Her skills add up over time, and I would list, almost a bit to summarize, this recognition: she has been awarded the title of Fellow of the International Union of Societies for Biomaterials Science and Engineering for her contribution to the progress of science. The various national societies of biomaterials and bioengineering have tens of thousands of members worldwide and the union of the various companies has elected Dr. Gatti to be part of the elite of scientists that consists of 32 members, and she was part of a parliamentary commission of inquiry as a responsible consultant. I know, difficult to read, but I found her report very interesting, perhaps because I live in a highly polluted area: here the mortality rate from tumors is terrible:
She deals with nanopathology or pathologies induced by micro and nano-sized particulate exposures, i.e. powders with dimensions less than 100nm (0.1 microns) but her research has become difficult due to the reduced availability of a suitable microscope.
Her flapping wings has not changed the world yet, but she has been able to reach the hearts of people who have made it possible to buy a new electron microscope with their donations.
Let us not stop at the fact that individually we cannot make a difference, let us not stop flying lightly on the difficulties, each of us can be the butterfly of change, let’s believe it, and do not let ourselves be crushed in the mud.