italy
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From Radiohead, to Yuppie Flu
Posted by Michael on 29 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: italy
While I’m writing this post I’m listening to Yuppie Flu’s new album, Fragile Forest.
Yuppie Flu are an Italian band that plays lo-fi pop arranged with analog electronic keyboards [from Last.FM, I suck at recognizing genres]. Their songs are in English, so go ahead and look for them, it’s really worth it.
The new album came out today, with the cool formula that Radiohead pioneered last year: pay-as-much-as-you-want. Yes, even nothing, for a 160 kbit/s, MP3, DRM Free version of the album.
I bought it and I’m not telling you how much I paid. It’s not zero and it’s not 1 euro. But it’s not the 15€ they offer for the physical CD version, nor the 25€ CD + T-shirt version. I strongly encourage you to try the album, and pay, even a symbolical sum, for it. This is how music distribution should work.
Get it here. It’s the homepage, but the links to buy with paypal (not incredibly usable, to be honest, but maybe it’s monday’s Human Computer Interaction test speaking for me :-) )
Stay tuned, more to come.
-– EDIT:
I posted before learning of this kind of contest they have. Apparently, by posting on my blog about the new album, I might win a ticket for one of their concerts, and give away one to one of my readers.
But I have to set up a contest as well! So…the reader that will post the best comment (i.e. the most convincing one: BE ORIGINAL) is going to come to the concert with me, should I get the tickets. Start fighting, multiple entries allowed :)
…come on guys, not so fast…
Moon Hoax again on public TV
Posted by Michael on 10 Mar 2008 | Tagged as: italy, space, television
I’ve covered this topic before but it looks like there’s no end to the shameless audience hunting by means of sacrificing culture, perpetrated by the italian public service television, RAI.
Once again, I borrow the words of my friend and science communicator Paolo Amoroso, on his blog.
“RAI neglects science for the sake of audience”
[…]
“A waste of public money for shows that deny the genuinity of the Apollo lunar landings”
[…]
“In the march 3rd episode of the show ‘Voyager’ RAI gives free speech to the conspiracy theory ramblings”
[…]
“Roberto Giacobbo (hosts) Voyager, a TV show for everything misterious….for a 8 years old child!”
But there’s more. A friend and fellow partecipant in the italian Forum “Forumastronautico” noted and commented on every error and misconception presented in the shameful show, an impressive display of ignorance (or, more likely, lucid exploitation of the public ignorance) that totals an astounding rate of one error every 36 seconds of show. Enjoy (in Italian, sorry)
Makes me even happier for not owning a TV .
Stay tuned, more to come.
New York Times on Italy
Posted by Michael on 31 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: italy
EDIT: This sat in the drafts for a while. I thought I’d posted it… The post date is fake, of course :)
Check this out. And I mean all of you.
If you’re Italian, you’ve probably heard of this over the news in the last few days, but I can guarantee you that reading it in its entirety is quite something. It’s refreshing to see that seeing from the outside they are as baffled as we are when we look around.
In a Funk, Italy Sings an Aria of Disappointment - New York Times
It’s interesting how much importance they give on the Grillo case.
I don’t really support each and every thing he says, or the way he says it, but he managed to reach a point where is visible enough to overcome the political censorship of TV, papers and “driven” media in general. Like he says, thanks to the Internet. I hope he’ll be wise spending his 15 minutes of fame.
As for me, I’m leaving this ship before it sinks. I’m not telling how. Yet.
Stay tuned, more to come
Italian newspaper with mixed up ideas about space
Posted by Michael on 28 Aug 2007 | Tagged as: massmedia, italy, space
I learn from my friend Alessandro (http://csidnc.altervista.org/blog.php?entry=entry070824-144120) that there is no end to the ridiculous.
On Friday the 24th, the local pages of La Stampa, a national available italian newspaper, had an interesting mini-article about a mysterious “Orbital Lunar Observatory“.
You can read the article below, of course in italian. But here’s a translation.
What the hell is the “Lunar Orbital Laboratory” for crying out loud?! How on earth is one supposed to think of the ISS after reading that title?
Plus, from a source that I’m not going to name, but I encourage to post a comment, even anonymous, I learnt that the…journalist (and I think I just found an improper use of the word ‘journalist’) found out about the iss lunar transit transit some weeks ago. The ISS has manouvered since then, and the transit (not all that rare) simply didn’t occur, at least not in the ground stripe descripted in the article.
And I’m not even going to comment about the errors in the writing(but you find them in the translation).
I’d like to know who’s behind the initials R.L. Is mr. (or miss, or mrs.) R.L. too shy? Or too ashamed? La Stampa readers deserve to know who are they wasting their money on!
This is one of many examples of how the space is presented (when is presented) on the italian mass media. Kinda makes one wonder about what do they tell us when they talk about politics, war, economy, medicine, you-name-it. E.g., when it comes to Computer Science, they often oversimplify and end up changing the meaning of the news or over-inflate problems to add drama, or bash on technology. This is the same.
Two clues make an evidence?What do you think? How do the mass media cover your area of expertise? Let me know in the comments!
Stay tuned, more to come.
Aug 28th - UPDATE: well, turns out that the author defends himself by saying that the titles aren’t decided by the authors but by the editors. And I believe him because it makes sense.
But the point remains, the charge aren’t dropped, they’re just moved from R.L. to someone else. The title is wrong, the article is not precise. This is no way of doing information. No way.
Stay tuned, more to come.
Nuclear in Italy
Posted by Michael on 31 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: italy, stumblings
Well, I was unsure whether to post this picture (click on the link for fullsize, so you can read the legend)…
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/18/Nuclear_power_stations.png
… or a scan of my last electricity bill, with the due fee highlited.
Then I’d figured that depicting my country as that red spot in the middle of the map was more dramatic, and less scary then a big number.
